At last, when lengthening days and quickening blood bespoke seafarings soon to come, that happened which surprised nobody. Hauk told them in the hall that he wanted to marry Alfhild Leifsdottir, and prayed Geirolf press the suit for him. “What must be, will be,” said his father, a better grace than awaited. Union of the families was clearly good for both.
Leif Egilsson agreed, and Alfhild had nothing but aye to say. The betrothal feast crowded the whole neighborhood together in cheer. Thyra hid the trouble within her, and Geirolf himself was calm if not blithe.
Right after, Hauk and his men were busking themselves to fare. Regardless of his doubts about gods, he led in offering for a safe voyage to Thor, Aegir, and St. Michael. But Alfhild found herself a quiet place alone, to cut runes on an ash tree in the name of Freyja.
When all was ready, she was there with the folk of Geirolf’s stead to see the sailors off. That morning was keen, wind roared in trees and skirled between cliffs, waves ran green and white beneath small flying clouds. Unn could not but hug her brother who was going, while Einar gave him a handclasp that shook. Thyra said, “Come home hale and early, my son.” Alfhild mostly stored away the sight of Hauk. Atli and others of the household mumbled this and that.
Geirolf shuffled forward. The cane on which he leaned rattled among the stones of the beach. He was hunched in a hairy cloak against the sharp air. His locks fell tangled almost to the coal-smoldering eyes. “Father, farewell,” Hauk said, taking his free hand.
“You mean ‘fare far,’ don’t you?” Geirolf grated. “‘Fare far and never come back.’ You’d like that, wouldn’t you? But we will meet again. Oh, yes, we will meet again.”
Hauk dropped the hand. Geirolf turned and sought the house. The rest behaved as if they had not heard, speaking loudly, amidst yelps of laughter, to overcome those words of foreboding. Soon Hauk called his orders to be gone.
Men scrambled aboard the laden ship. Its sail slatted aloft and filled, the mooring lines were cast loose, the hull stood out to sea. Alfhild waved until it was gone from sight behind the bend where Disafoss fell.
The summer passed—plowing, sowing, lambing, calving, farrowing, hoeing, reaping, flailing, butchering—rain, hail, sun, stars, loves, quarrels, births, deaths—and the season wore toward fall. Alfhild was seldom at Geirolf’s garth, nor was Leif; for Hauk’s father grew steadily worse. After midsummer he could no longer leave his bed. But often he whispered, between lung-tearing coughs, to those who tended him, “I would kill you if I could.”
On a dark day late in the season, when rain roared about the hall and folk and hounds huddled close to fires that hardly lit the gloom around, Geirolf awoke from a heavy sleep. Thyra marked it and came to him. Cold and dankness gnawed their way through her clothes. The fever was in him like a brand. He plucked restlessly at his blanket, where he half sat in his short shut-bed. Though flesh had wasted from the great bones, his fingers still had strength to tear the wool. The mattress rustled under him. “Straw-death, straw-death,” he muttered.
Thyra laid a palm on his brow. “Be at ease,” she said.
It dragged from him: “You’ll not be rid…of me…so fast…by straw-death.” An icy sweat broke forth and the last struggle began.
Long it was, Geirolf’s gasps and the sputtering flames the only noises within that room, while rain and wind ramped outside and night drew in. Thyra stood by the bedside to wipe the sweat off her man, blood and spittle from his beard. A while after sunset, he rolled his eyes back and died.
Thyra called for water and lamps. She cleansed him, clad him in his best, and laid him out. A drawn sword was on his breast.
In the morning, thralls and carls alike went forth under her orders. A hillock stood in the fields about half a mile inland from the house. They dug a grave chamber in the top of this, lining it well with timber. “Won’t you bury him in his ship?” asked Atli.
“It is rotten, unworthy of him,” Thyra said. Yet she made them haul it to the barrow, around which she had stones to outline a hull. Meanwhile folk readied a grave-ale, and messengers bade neighbors come.
When all were there, men of Geirolf’s carried him on a litter to his resting place and put him in, together with weapons and a jar of Southland coins. After beams had roofed the chamber, his friends from aforetime took shovels and covered it well. They replaced the turfs of sere grass, leaving the hillock as it had been save that it was now bigger. Einar Thorolfsson kindled his father’s ship. It burned till dusk, when the horns of the new moon stood over the fjord. Meanwhile folk had gone back down to the garth to feast and drink. Riding home next day, well gifted by Thyra, they told each other that this had been an honorable burial.
The moon waxed. On the first night that it rose full, Geirolf came again.
A thrall named Kark had been late in the woods, seeking a strayed sheep. Coming home, he passed near the howe. The moon was barely above the pines; long shivery beams of light ran on the water, lost themselves in shadows ashore, glinted wanly anew where a bedewed stone wall snaked along a stubblefield. Stars were few. A great stillness lay on the land, not even an owl hooted, until all at once dogs down in the garth began howling. It was not the way they howled at the moon; across the mile between, it sounded ragged and terrified. Kark felt the chill close in around him, and hastened toward home.
Something heavy trod the earth. He looked around and saw the bulk of a huge man coming across the field from the barrow. “Who’s that?” he called uneasily. No voice replied, but the weight of those footfalls shivered through the ground into his bones. Kark swallowed, gripped his staff, and stood where he was. But then the shape came so near that moonlight picked out the head of Geirolf. Kark screamed, dropped his weapon, and ran.
Geirolf followed slowly, clumsily behind.
Down in the garth, light glimmered red as doors opened. Folk saw Kark running, gasping for breath. Atli and Einar led the way out, each with a torch in one hand, a sword in the other. Little could they see beyond the wild flame-gleam. Kark reached them, fell, writhed on the hard-beaten clay of the yard, and wailed.
“What is it, you lackwit?” Atli snapped, and kicked him. Then Einar pointed his blade.
“A stranger—” Atli began.
Geirolf rocked into sight. The mould of the grave clung to him. His eyes stared unblinking, unmoving, blank in the moonlight, out of a gray face whereon the skin crawled. The teeth in his tangled beard were dry. No breath smoked from his nostrils. He held out his arms, crook-fingered.
“Father!” Einar cried. The torch hissed from his grip, flickered weakly at his feet, and went out. The men at his back jammed the doorway of the hall as they sought its shelter.
“The skipper’s come again,” Atli quavered. He sheathed his sword, though that was hard when his hand shook, and made himself step forward. “Skipper, d’you know your old shipmate Atli?”
The dead man grabbed him, lifted him, and dashed him to earth. Einar heard bones break. Atli jerked once and lay still. Geirolf trod him and Kark underfoot. There was a sound of cracking and rending. Blood spurted forth.
Blindly, Einar swung blade. The edge smote but would not bite. A wave of grave-chill passed over him. He whirled and bounded back inside.
Thyra had seen. “Bar the door,” she bade. The windows were already shuttered against frost. “Men, stand fast. Women, stoke up the fires.”
They heard the lich groping about the yard. Walls creaked where Geirolf blundered into them. Thyra called through the door, “Why do you wish us ill, your own household?” But only those noises gave answer. The hounds cringed and whined.
“Lay iron at the doors and under every window,” Thyra commanded. “If it will not cut him, it may keep him out.”
All that night, then, folk huddled in the hall. Geirolf climbed onto the roof and rode the ridgepole, drumming his heels on the shakes till the whole building boomed. A little before sunrise, it stopped. Peering out by the first dull dawnlight, Thyra saw no mark of her husband but his deep-sunken fo
otprints and the wrecked bodies he had left.
“He grew so horrible before he died,” Unn wept. “Now he can’t rest, can he?”
“We’ll make him an offering,” Thyra said through her weariness. “It may be we did not give him enough when we buried him.”
Few would follow her to the howe. Those who dared, brought along the best horse on the farm. Einar, as the son of the house when Hauk was gone, himself cut its throat after a sturdy man had given the hammer-blow. Carls and wenches butchered the carcass, which Thyra and Unn cooked over a fire in whose wood was blent the charred rest of the dragonship. Nobody cared to eat much of the flesh or broth. Thyra poured what was left over the bones, upon the grave.
Two ravens circled in sight, waiting for folk to go so they could take the food. “Is that a good sign?” Thyra sighed. “Will Odin fetch Geirolf home?”
That night everybody who had not fled to neighboring steads gathered in the hall. Soon after the moon rose, they heard the footfalls come nearer and nearer. They heard Geirolf break into the storehouse and worry the laid-out bodies of Atli and Kark. They heard him kill cows in the barn. Again he rode the roof.
In the morning Leif Egilsson arrived, having gotten the news. He found Thyra too tired and shaken to do anything further. “The ghost did not take your offering,” he said, “but maybe the gods will.”
In the oakenshaw, he led the giving of more beasts. There was talk of a thrall for Odin, but he said that would not help if this did not. Instead, he saw to the proper burial of the slain, and of those kine which nobody would dare eat. That night he abode there.
And Geirolf came back. Throughout the darkness, he tormented the home which had been his.
“I will bide here one more day,” Leif said next sunrise. “We all need rest—though ill is it that we must sleep during daylight when we’ve so much readying for winter to do.”
By that time, some other neighborhood men were also on hand. They spoke loudly of how they would hew the lich asunder.
“You know not what you boast of,” said aged Grim the Wise. “Einar smote, and he strikes well for a lad, but the iron would not bite. It never will. Ghost-strength is in Geirolf, and all the wrath he could not set free during his life.”
That night folk waited breathless for moonrise. But when the gnawed shield climbed over the pines, nothing stirred. The dogs, too, no longer seemed cowed. About midnight, Grim murmured into the shadows, “Yes, I thought so. Geirolf walks only when the moon is full.”
“Then tomorrow we’ll dig him up and burn him!” Leif said.
“No,” Grim told them. “That would spell the worst of luck for everybody here. Don’t you see, the anger and unpeace which will not let him rest, those would be forever unslaked? They could not but bring doom on the burners.”
“What then can we do?” Thyra asked dully.
“Leave this stead,” Grim counselled, “at least when the moon is full.”
“Hard will that be,” Einar sighed. “Would that my brother Hauk were here.”
“He should have returned erenow,” Thyra said. “May we in our woe never know that he has come to grief himself.”
In truth, Hauk had not. His wares proved welcome in Flanders, where he bartered for cloth that he took across to England. There Ottar greeted him, and he met the young King Alfred. At that time there was no war going on with the Danes, who were settling into the Danelaw and thus in need of household goods. Hauk and Ottar did a thriving business among them. This led them to think they might do as well in Iceland, whither Norse folk were moving who liked not King Harald Fairhair. They made a voyage to see. Foul winds hampered them on the way home. Hence fall was well along when Hauk’s ship returned.
The day was still and cold. Low overcast turned sky and water the hue of iron. A few gulls cruised and mewed, while under them sounded creak and splash of oars, swearing of men, as the knorr was rowed. At the end of the fjord-branch, garth and leaves were tiny splashes of color, lost against rearing cliffs, brown fields, murky wildwood. Straining ahead from afar, Hauk saw that a bare handful of men came down to the shore, moving listlessly more than watchfully. When his craft was unmistakable, though, a few women—no youngsters—sped from the hall as if they could not wait. Their cries came to him more thin than the gulls’.
Hauk lay alongside the dock. Springing forth, he called merrily, “Where is everybody? How fares Alfhild?” His words lost themselves in silence. Fear touched him. “What’s wrong?”
Thyra trod forth. Years might have gone by during his summer abroad, so changed was she. “You are barely in time,” she said in an unsteady tone. Taking his hands, she told him how things stood.
Hauk stared long into emptiness. At last, “Oh, no,” he whispered. “What’s to be done?”
“We hoped you might know that, my son,” Thyra answered. “The moon will be full tomorrow night.”
His voice stumbled. “I am no wizard. If the gods themselves would not lay this ghost, what can I do?”
Einar spoke, in the brashness of youth: “We thought you might deal with him as you did with the werewolf.”
“But that was—No, I cannot!” Hauk croaked. “Never ask me.”
“Then I fear we must leave,” Thyra said. “For aye. You see how many have already fled, thrall and free alike, though nobody else has a place for them. We’ve not enough left to farm these acres. And who would buy them of us? Poor must we go, helpless as the poor ever are.”
“Iceland—” Hauk wet his lips. “Well, you shall not want while I live.” Yet he had counted on this homestead, whether to dwell on or sell.
“Tomorrow we move over to Leif’s garth, for the next three days and nights,” Thyra said.
Unn shuddered. “I know not if I can come back,” she said. “This whole past month here, I could hardly ever sleep.” Dulled skin and sunken eyes bore her out.
“What else would you do?” Hauk asked.
“Whatever I can,” she stammered, and broke into tears. He knew: wedding herself too young to whoever would have her dowryless, poor though the match would be—or making her way to some town to turn whore, his little sister.
“Let me think on this,” Hauk begged. “Maybe I can hit on something.”
His crew were also daunted when they heard. At eventide they sat in the hall and gave only a few curt words about what they had done in foreign parts. Everyone lay down early on bed, bench, or floor, but none slept well.
Before sunset, Hauk had walked forth alone. First he sought the grave of Atli. “I’m sorry, dear old friend,” he said. Afterward he went to Geirolf’s howe. It loomed yellow-gray with withered grass wherein grinned the skull of the slaughtered horse. At its foot were strewn the charred bits of the ship, inside stones which outlined a greater but unreal hull. Around reached stubblefields and walls, hemmed in by woods on one side and water on the other, rock lifting sheer beyond. The chill and the quiet had deepened.
Hauk climbed to the top of the barrow and stood there a while, head bent downward. “Oh, father,” he said, “I learned doubt in Christian lands. What’s right for me to do?” There was no answer. He made a slow way back to the dwelling.
All were up betimes next day. It went slowly over the woodland path to Leif’s, for animals must be herded along. The swine gave more trouble than most. Hauk chuckled once, not very merrily, and remarked that at least this took folk’s minds off their sorrows. He raised no mirth.
But he had Alfhild ahead of him. At the end of the way, he sprinted shouting into the yard. Leif owned less land than Geirolf, his buildings were smaller and fewer, most of his guests must house outdoors in sleeping bags. Hauk paid no heed. “Alfhild!” he called. “I’m here!”
She left the dough she was kneading and sped to him. They hugged each other hard and long, in sight of the whole world. None thought that shame, as things were. At last she said, striving not to weep, “How we’ve longed for you! Now the nightmare can end.”
He stepped back. “What mean you?” he utter
ed slowly, knowing full well.
“Why—” She was bewildered. “Won’t you give him his second death?”
Hauk gazed past her for some heartbeats before he said: “Come aside with me.”
Hand in hand, they wandered off. A meadow lay hidden from the garth by a stand of aspen. Elsewhere around, pines speared into a sky that today was bright. Clouds drifted on a nipping breeze. Far off, a stag bugled.
Hauk spread feet apart, hooked thumbs in belt, and made himself meet her eyes. “You think over-highly of my strength,” he said.
“Who has more?” she asked. “We kept ourselves going by saying you would come home and make things good again.”
“What if the drow is too much for me?” His words sounded raw through the hush. Leaves dropped yellow from their boughs.
She flushed. “Then your name will live.”
“Yes—” Softly he spoke the words of the High One:
“Kine die, kinfolk die,
and so at last oneself.
This I know that never dies:
how dead men’s deeds are deemed.”
“You will do it!” she cried gladly.
His head shook before it drooped. “No. I will not. I dare not.”
She stood as if he had clubbed her.
“Won’t you understand?” he began.
The wound he had dealt her hopes went too deep. “So you show yourself a nithing!”
“Hear me,” he said, shaken. “Were the lich anybody else’s—”
Overwrought beyond reason, she slapped him and choked, “The gods bear witness, I give them my holiest oath, never will I wed you unless you do this thing. See, by my blood I swear.” She whipped out her dagger and gashed her wrist. Red rills coursed out and fell in drops on the fallen leaves.
He was aghast. “You know not what you say. You’re too young, you’ve been too sheltered. Listen.”
She would have fled from him, but he gripped her shoulders and made her stand. “Listen,” went between his teeth. “Geirolf is still my father—my father who begot me, reared me, named the stars for me, weaponed me to make my way in the world. How can I fight him? Did I slay him, what horror would come upon me and mine?”
The Sword & Sorcery Anthology Page 12
