by Mark Coakley
King Lambi then spoke, in a booming deep voice, saying, "Is this the boy who wants to fight for me?"
Harald said, "Yes, my lord. This is my nephew, Halfdan son of Gødrød, and he is the best young fighter in the town of Os. He will serve you well."
King Lambi said, "Why is your nephew's face so black?"
Harald said, "His mother was an outlander, and passed on her looks to him."
"Can it even speak Norse?"
"He can, my lord. Perfectly. In fact, he is an excellent poet."
King Lambi leaned forward and placed both of his fists on the table-top and said to Halfdan, "Then tell me a poem, troll-faced boy. Make one up about why I should hire you."
Harald glanced at Halfdan, taking a step backwards.
After a long pause, Halfdan said:
My lord is famous for
Feeding crows with unlucky foes
Blood-steaming battlefields
Gave birth to your worthy rule
All have heard of your riches
How you spread it around
Your fighters wear fancy clothes
With such fine treats to eat
Halfdan gestured with one hand towards the feasting-tables surrounding him, and there was some laughter from the men sitting in the chairs.
More confident, Halfdan glared at King Lambi and shouted:
Since youth I yearned to serve
You, and join your war-ship's crew!
I knew that I needed
To serve you, or serve nothing!
After a pause, Halfdan said lamely, "The end."
There was some clapping, and a few hoots. The men at the tables had all heard better poems, but also many much worse. Most were impressed to hear it from someone so young and so odd-looking.
King Lambi was still standing behind his table on the platform. He seemed to be nodding slightly in approval. Finally he said, "If you can fight as well as you rhyme and alliterate, you may be worthy. Come back tomorrow at noon, alone."
Halfdan walked out of the hall with a big grin across his face.
The next day, again wearing newly-bought clothes and fresh blue paint smeared around his eyes, Halfdan showed up at the hall for the hall-joining ritual. The king and some others waited for him outside the hall, standing in a group on a field. They all wore fancy clothes and face-paint too. King Lambi was wearing a long white linen gown.
A grey stallion was tied to a stake in the ground.
King Lambi said, "Halfdan son of Gødrød. Kneel in front of the horse."
When Halfdan had done so, King Lambi said, "Do you choose to join my bodyguard, knowing that you can never leave my service, except by your death or by my command?"
"I do," Halfdan said.
He was distracted for moment by the buzzing sound of a hornet flying past his head, then he forced himself to concentrate on what the king was saying.
"Do you vow to protect me from all foes, both inside and outside Fjordane?"
"Yes."
"If I am struck down, do you vow to take revenge on my killer, even if he is of your family?"
"I do."
"And will you accept the greatest suffering and the greatest shame known to man or gods, if you should ever break your vows made here today?"
"I do."
King Lambi said, "Then let us see if the gods approve." A man in priests' clothing gave King Lambi a wide, bronze-bladed knife. King Lambi held the horse's head with one hand and, with the other, cut its throat.
As Halfdan knelt in front of the startled beast, the hurt sprayed and drenched him in hot, sticky blood. It went onto his eyes and blinded him. He had to hold his breath to keep the reeking gore out of his nose.
A low, bubbling groan from the dying horse. It reared up to its back legs. It raised its big front hooves and started kicking wildly over the blood-soaked head of the unmoving young man kneeling on red-drenched grass.
Halfdan did not flinch. His knew that his good luck would not let him be struck by any of the random hoof-swipes, and he was right.
When the horse stopped kicking, and fell down dead, the group of men cheered.
"The gods approve!" shouted the priest who had brought the knife.
"Stand up, Halfdan the Black," King Lambi said. "Get yourself cleaned up. Your new life starts now."
Halfdan finally allowed himself to move; he stood. A slave handed him a bucket of water, then put a big wood box at his feet. Halfdan took off all his bloody clothes and washed his body clean with a cloth dipped in the bucket. When the last of the horse-blood was off him, Halfdan opened the lid of the box. He saw with joy that it was full of fancy-looking new clothes. Fine wool pants and thick wool socks and a puffy-sleeved white shirt made of the same linen as the gown King Lambi now wore. In the box there was also a pair of shiny cow-leather shoes and a pig-leather belt. On one end of the belt was a silver belt-buckle shaped, as described earlier, like an unnatural-looking beast with gripping hands.
"My first gift to you," King Lambi had said.
That night in the hall, Halfdan drank horn after horn of mead and beer, feasted on horse-steak and listened awe-struck to King Lambi singing sad old songs and playing a silver harp.
Chapter 5
RUNNING AWAY
Eleven years later — lying on his back on the cold ground in the shadow of King Lambi's hall, not far from where he had undergone the joining-ritual — Halfdan realized that he was not dying from the arrow after all. He was getting his breath back, and the pain in his gut was getting less strong. Arrow-shots to the belly were known to be extremely painful, not like this. Such hurts were usually accompanied by the smell of shit leaking from a torn-open large intestine. There was no shit-smell now.
Then what had happened?
Halfdan moved a hand to the arrow-shaft and touched it. No jolt of pain. He touched the thin piece of ash-wood with his hand and tried to move it. It was stuck solidly into something, but not him.
He raised his head to look. The belt-buckle. The arrow had stuck into the soft silver of his belt-buckle — the long-ago gift from King Lambi. It had saved his life. The barbed iron tip of the arrow had stuck into one of the paws of the decorative beast-shape.
So lucky!
He yanked the arrow-tip out of the belt buckle and glanced at it. Just a normal-looking arrow, the sort that could be used for either hunting or war. He tossed it aside.
His skin under the belt-buckle felt sore but unbroken.
Halfdan rolled over and onto his hands and knees, still breathing heavily. He looked around the darkness. Who had shot him? He could not see anybody. The dogs were still eating whatever they had found.
What was going on?
He had to go inside to warn King Lambi.
He pushed himself to his feet and, unsteady from both the arrow-impact and the horns of booze drunk earlier, drew out his sword. His heart was pounding with near-panic. Looking all around for the unfriendly archer, he staggered quickly to the front of the hall. He had to warn them.
With his free hand, he yanked at the handle of the heavy oak door. It should have easily swung open on its greased iron hinges. It had always done so before. But now the door would not open. It was somehow jammed shut. He heaved back with all his strength, tugging at the handle. No use.
The wall-masks of the gods glared blankly past him.
Halfdan was very confused.
Had someone inside barred the door shut?
Why?
Halfdan raised his sword and banged its handle hard onto the thick oak-wood door-planks. He yelled, "Open! Open the door! Someone out here just tried to kill me! Open! Help!"
He stopped banging and yelling for a moment to listen through the door. Had he woken up anybody? Was that a scraping sound coming through the wood, or just his imagination?
Halfdan raised his sword-handle again and was about to bang on the door again when he heard a sound of a bow-string behind him. Halfdan flinched, just as an arrow stabbed into the door, a finger's-length a
way from his head.
He turned around. A crowd of armed men wearing war-helmets, fifty or sixty at least, were running towards him in a battle-line. Some were being dragged forward by chains attached to big, excited-looking war-dogs. These arriving dogs started barking, which made the hall guard-dogs start barking back. The night filled with barking and growling as the two groups of dogs ran madly at each other.
"Tor's balls!" Halfdan shouted.
Most of the men running towards Halfdan were carrying shields in one hand and a spear or an ax or a sword in the other hand; a few of them were archers.
A bow-string twanged from their direction, and another grey-feathered arrow bit into the door between his legs, a small distance under Halfdan's crotch.
Helpless fear pounded in his chest and neck. Hard to breathe. He had been in many battles, but this was different. He was alone, without a leader giving commands, his thinking slowed by all the beer he had guzzled inside the hall — Halfdan was not at all ready for this!
An army was running at him from the front; the door to the hall behind him would not open.
There was nothing he could do for those inside.
He would die if he stayed here.
He heard the sound of an archer shooting at him again and ducked. Again the arrow missed. Without a thought, forgetting to check the back door to the hall, Halfdan turned and ran. Back towards the out-houses.
Iron-tipped arrows spat hissing over his shoulders.
He raced past a row of smelly wicker huts and across King Lambi's farm-field, which was covered with barley-stubble from the recent harvest, and towards the town wall. It was made of sharpened pine-logs, held upright and together by iron nails and thick pine-wood cross-beams. He tossed his sword over it and leaped high to grab the top of the fence and threw a foot on a cross-beam and hurled himself over.
He landed on his feet on the ground on the other side, rolling his body onto the ground at the moment of impact, then bouncing quickly up. From the direction of the hall, he heard, mixed with the noises of dogs fighting dogs, the indistinct yelling of men. He could not make out any of their words, but they did not sound friendly.
Who were they?
He was standing near an oak-tree with thick, low branches. He grabbed a branch and pulled himself high enough up to see over the top of the town wall.
King Lambi's hall was surrounded by dozens of helmet-wearing strangers and their snarling war-dogs. And a group of five or six dogs was running towards the part of the fence Halfdan had climbed over, followed by a larger number of the mysterious fighters. One of them pointed at where Halfdan hung from the tree branch. Halfdan's head and the top of his body could be seen from inside the fence. Halfdan heard the man shout, "Look! He's hiding up that tree! Lift the dogs over the fence and they'll trap him up there!"
Halfdan dropped back to the ground, now completely panic-filled, and ran away from the fence, towards the line of trees at the base of the mountain-range in front of him. Despite the light of stars and moon, it was too dark to see the ground well, and he often stumbled. He ran towards some raspberry bushes, tried to jump over them, but one of his feet tripped into a thick branch-loop and he flung forwards and down into the mass of spiky berry-branches. His falling face slid along a thorn-covered branch, ripping skin from his beard-covered cheek and one of his ears. He dropped his sword and peeled the gripping thorns off his face. Blood and raspberry-juice dripped onto his white linen shirt. One of his shoes had fallen off.
Behind him, he heard the deep baying of dogs. They sounded like they were on this side of the wall. He had to get away from their fast, heavy bodies and terrible teeth. He stumbled away in the light of moon and stars. He ran past some big chunks of granite-stone that had, ages ago, rolled down from the mountain. He ran around the boulders and scattered bushes and trees and came to a mud-banked stream. As he jumped over the thin flow of water and used both hands to scramble up the chilly, slippery mud of the other side, Halfdan realized something.
He had forgotten his sword and one shoe in the raspberry bushes.
Halfdan hissed, "Fool!" and slapped his forehead.
How could he fight off dogs or armed fighters with empty hands?
He couldn't.
If they caught him, they would easily kill him.
"Fool!" he said again.
The dogs were still barking somewhere in the darkness behind him, and seemed to be getting louder.
He ran.
The ground was now sloping upwards. This was the lowest part of the mountain that brooded over Eid. The birch and pine and occasional oak trees grew closer together here, and the chunks of rock strewn between the tree-trunks were covered with green moss.
Inside the forest, he stopped to listen behind him. Heard the barking dogs — getting closer?
He looked at his feet. His right one was covered by an untied cow-leather shoe. His left foot was bare. He bent to tie the strings on his right shoe with trembling fingers. Each clumsy knot he tried to make fell apart.
"Tor's balls! Forget it!"
He kicked off the single shoe and ran barefoot into the forest. He followed a rock-strewn trail that twisted up-mountain through the rocks and trees and clumps of low bushes. The dark around him and the confusion inside made it hard to move fast up the mountain-base. His bare feet slipped in the cold gravelly mud of the trail and scraped on small rocks.
He felt an old, familiar pain in one knee (years ago, he had twisted it while jumping off a war-ship to raid a town with King Lambi); it throbbed more and more as he ran.
Breathing hard, he passed under the thick moss-covered branches of a fallen tree and tripped over some tangled roots twisting out of the ground. He ran through piles of rocks from long-ago avalanches. Sometimes he saw patches of clear starry sky overhead through the dim branches overhead.
His face still stung and bled from the thorns of that raspberry bush.
Once he blundered off the trail and felt his feet and ankles burning from the acid licks of stinging nettles.
A short while after, he turned a twist in the trail and his bare foot slipped in some mud. His foot slid off the trail and into a knee-high ant-hill of dry pine-needles. A smell of vinegar rose from the broken-open mound, and the bugs swarmed onto him and bit at his skin until his rubbed them off with a hand.
Now he did not hear the dogs barking anymore.
The forest trail zig-zagged in the shape of a lightning-bolt. He followed it up and up. His legs and back muscles ached from the exertion. Blood pounded in his neck and head. His knee hurt worse with every frantic step.
He had to rest. He stopped on top of rock ledge and put his hands for support onto the rough trunk of a pine-tree. There he rested, in a patch of moonlight and starlight, breathing harshly, staring at the pebbles and little plants around his feet.
Who was attacking the hall?
What was happening to his king and all his friends?
Why?
No sound of barking now. But the dogs must still be after him, running as a pack through the forest, their open mouths full of floppy red tongues and wet white fangs.
Run!
As he started going again, his foot painfully kicked a loose, fist-sized rock. It bounced up to hit a skull-sized rock with a loud, sharp bang!
Behind and below him, the dogs heard the noise and started barking again.
They sounded closer.
He needed some kind of weapon. As Halfdan scrambled up the dark and slippery mountainside, he picked up a broken birch-branch the length of his arm. Then be bent to snatch up a fist-sized rock.
Again, Halfdan slipped on the trail-mud. He fell onto a man-sized pine-tree, one that would be perfect for decorating at a Yule feast. Would he ever enjoy a Yule feast again? He pushed himself away from the half-broken tree, hands now covered with sticky pine-sap and bits of bark and dry needles.
The mountain trail let up to a small waterfall pouring from a rock-crack overhead into a small pool, which was drained by a ro
cky stream running downhill. The dark waterfall was sided by steep granite cliffs. In the dim light, Halfdan could barely see the hand-paintings that covered these cliffs. He had been to this place a few times before, for religious rituals with all the folk of Eid, and remembered how impressive the cliffs had looked in daylight. The rocks were covered with big, brightly-coloured paintings of wild beasts, war-ships, bolts of lightning and dozens of man-figures with huge, erect penises. Near the cliff-top, over all the other pictures, was the largest of the painted pictures — depicting the yellow-flamed sun.
The trail got steeper as it went past the tinkling waterfall and twisted around giant boulders towards a steep, jagged-rock cliff-face. The trail went up a natural ramp along the side of the cliff. As Halfdan limped up this narrow path, with a steep drop to his right, he heard the sounds of snarling close behind him.
Halfdan turned and saw two big, grey-furred war-dogs burst out of the forest shadows after him. The loped up past the waterfall and onto the narrow cliff path and up after him.
There was no point in running anymore. Halfdan threw the fist-sized rock at the first dog. It hit the dog's chest and bounced away. The beast seemed not to notice and jumped at Halfdan, its open mouth drooling. Halfdan swung the heavy birch-branch at its open mouth full of spiky yellow teeth. The club knocked the dog sideways off the path. It fell, barking, down to the chunks of rocks below.
The other dog leapt at him. Halfdan swung the stick at it and missed. The dog bit onto Halfdan's sore knee, clamped its teeth tight, shaking its strong neck to rip away a piece of Halfdan's flesh.
Halfdan stumbled back, trying to get a hard strike with the birch-branch on the dogs thick, squirming back. The war-dog tugged hard at his knee, growling deep in its throat.
"No," Halfdan groaned. He toppled backwards. As he fell, the dog let go of his knee and lunged forward towards the soft brown skin of Halfdan's exposed throat. Just before the teeth reached their target, Halfdan punched his right fist into the side of the dog's thick neck, while twisting frantically to one side.
