Tord’s helm was simple—conical shaped with a heavy nasal bar of flattened iron hanging down the center in front to protect the face. But examining it closely, I could see that all the welds and rivets had been skillfully done, and I was able to adjust the leather suspension system inside so it fit my head well. His woolen cloak was long and heavy, similar to mine in size though not as nicely made. I took it, too, for extra warmth on cold or rainy nights, and to wrap my belongings in.
The only other armor possessed by either man was the metal-studded leather jerkin Alf had worn, which before had belonged to Rolf. Though it did not turn weapons aside as well as a mail brynie, it provided more protection than no armor at all, and was well made. Other than bloodstains, it was in good condition. Despite the deaths of its two previous owners, it had only one small cut in it, in the front where my arrow had entered.
Alf’s shield was unusual. It was almost a hand’s span smaller than most, and where most shields are made of a single layer of planks of linden wood, riveted together at the rim and center boss, his was made of thin slats of oak in two layers, laid crosswise to each other and riveted. As an archer, I would frequently have to carry my shield slung, even in battle. The smaller size would be more comfortable when it hung across my back, though it would give less protection in a fight. The idea of combining the toughness of oak with alternating layers of thin slats, their grain running across each other, I liked greatly. Such a shield should be difficult to split or pierce.
Only Alf had possessed a sword. I thought it balanced poorly and didn’t take it. For now, I would rely on my dagger and the small-axe I’d taken from the villager Kar. I took Alf’s quiver and stuffed it with all of the arrows both men had possessed. If I was to offer my services as an archer to a chieftain going raiding or to war, I would need many arrows. Two quivers full did not seem too many.
Between the two dead men, they’d been carrying twenty-three small English silver coins. I tried to share the silver with Einar, but he insisted I would need it more than he. I gave him three coins, though, to take to Hrodgar.
“Tell him I regret I had to kill his hounds,” I said, “but I had no choice. I know a man can become greatly attached to hounds. My father Hrorik was to his. Silver will not compensate for the loss I’ve caused, but I offer it to show Hrodgar my regret.”
Einar grinned at my words.
“Why do you smile?” I asked.
“Hrodgar sent his hounds to hunt a murderer and bandit. It’s a rare bandit indeed who asks pardon and pays recompense for killing the hounds that hunt him.”
I spent a chilly day wrapped in naught but the extra cloak I’d taken from Tord’s gear, washing my clothing in the stream. I weighted them with rocks to hold them underwater and let them soak all morning, then scrubbed them with sand. While they dried, spread out on boulders in the sun, I stitched the rips and tears, using a coarse needle I whittled from a twig and thread I unraveled from the dead men’s clothes. My tunic, trousers and cloak would never again resemble the fine garments Sigrid had made for me, but many of the stains of soil and blood washed out, and those that remained were reduced to faded shadows on the cloth. At least now I no longer looked as though I’d spent several days slaughtering pigs.
Einar left me to return to his village at midday. Before he departed, he draped the bodies of Toke’s two dead warriors over the back of one of the horses, and told me he would take them into the forest and leave them there. “You’re not planning to leave here until tomorrow morn,” he said, “after your clothes have dried and you’ve rested. It is best not to sleep with the bodies nearby. It is certain they’ll attract wolves, and it may be that the spirits of these dead men will linger near their bodies in the night, angry at their deaths, for the spirits of these men will not be welcome among the heroes and Gods in Valhalla.”
I wondered if Einar was right about the dead men’s spirits. Would they wander the earth forever as draugr, restless dead, or would they find their way to Hel and spend the afterlife in the realm of the dead? Harald had told me that when an evil man died, often his spirit was doomed to wander the earth, trapped near where his bones lie. The sudden chill you sometimes feel for no reason when traveling through forest, or along a road, was the breath of the invisible, watching dead, he’d said.
Einar walked with me to the top of the hill and pointed to the line visible in the distant tree tops that I’d noticed the day before. “That marks the great road, which many call the old army road,” he said. “It’s ancient and runs the length of Jutland, from the Limfjord in the north down to the Danevirke, the great earthen wall in the south that King Godfred built across the southern border of the kingdom of the Danes many years ago, when the Franks threatened to invade our land. My father, who at the time was a young man not yet married, and his father both responded to the summons of the king and helped build the great wall.
“The army road has been there since before the memory of any living man. It will take you to Hedeby—the town is on the Sliefjord, on the east coast of Jutland, down a short spur off the main road, by the eastern end of the Danevirke. The journey from the Limfjord to Hedeby can be made in five days at a hard ride. From here, at an easy pace, it should take you no more than seven, or at most eight.”
Einar mounted his own horse, and took the reins of the horse that bore the bodies. The third horse, a brown mare, I would keep, that my long journey south would be eased.
“Safe journey,” I told him.
“And to you,” he replied. “Be wary of all you meet, for you have undertaken a dangerous task and know not who may be your ally or your enemy as you pursue it.” He smiled. “And take special care as you travel in these parts, for I’ve heard rumor that a dangerous bandit is abroad.”
I traveled south at a leisurely pace, set in part by the pain that developed in my seat and back from spending long hours astride a horse. Though I knew the rudiments of riding, my actual time on horseback had until now been very limited, and I found it soon became an uncomfortable experience. Many hours the mare and I both walked, me leading her by the reins instead of riding.
By the third day, my aching legs and back tempted me to abandon her altogether, but I knew that at journey’s end I could trade the mare for provisions or silver, so I did not.
Several times along the journey, in the early morning or late afternoon, my progress was further delayed while I paused to hunt, for I thought it wise to save my small supply of salted, dried meat for a time when haste was critical and taste was not.
It was a haunted trip. Now that my mind was not filled with concerns for survival, my thoughts by day and my dreams by night were constantly visited by memories of Ulf, Rolf, Aidan, and the others who’d died, and especially of Harald. Harald came to me often in the night, as I slept. His face was pale and his eyes were sad, but he never spoke. How I longed to hear his voice and his laughter again. Whenever I called out to him, though, he disappeared. Whenever my own voice calling Harald’s name awakened me in the night after a dream-world visit from him I wept—for the dead and for myself. Never in my life had I felt so alone as I did on that journey south.
There came a morning when, as I prepared to mount my horse and embark upon the day’s journey, I was struck by the realization that the sun’s position as it rose above the trees looked the same as it had at Hrorik’s estate, in the same hour of the morn. I was overcome with a longing to ride east, to find our fjord and see Sigrid again, and Ubbe, and even all of the other carls and thralls who lived on the estate. Though there were few I knew truly well, and fewer still I counted as comrades, they were at least familiar, for I’d known them all since childhood. I mounted my horse and turned her away from the road, toward the coast and the rising sun.
We traveled through the forest but a few paces when I pulled up against the reins and stopped. Ahead of me, somewhere to the east, lay the world I’d grown up in; the world where I’d been transformed from thrall to free, and from a boy to a man. It was the world whe
re my sister Sigrid still lived, the only family that remained to me—the only person still alive who loved me, and whom I loved. Behind me lay the road that led south to Hedeby and a new and unknown life.
I knew I could not go east. I could not return to my home. In my mind, I saw again the night of the attack and heard Toke’s voice shouting, “Kill them all! There can be no witnesses.” The morning after the attack, I’d heard Toke tell the men he’d sent to hunt me that he would meet them at the estate. If he was not already there, he soon would be.
Even if I somehow managed to meet secretly with Sigrid and Ubbe, I would place their lives in danger merely by giving them knowledge of Toke’s treachery, and by letting them know I still lived. They could not possess such knowledge and act unchanged around Toke. Toke was a villain, but he was no fool.
By killing his own brother and murdering the women and children after giving his oath that they’d be safe, Toke had committed terrible crimes. For now, as far as he was aware, only I knew the truth—I and his own men, and their guilt ensured their silence. If Toke ever suspected that Sigrid or Ubbe had discovered what he’d done, I feared he’d have them killed, too. Reluctantly, I turned the mare back to the road, and spurred her toward the unknown.
During the last days of my journey south, the road passed in and out of forested lands. For long stretches it crossed open heaths, and twice in the distance I saw great mounds, the tombs of ancient kings. Toward the evening of the seventh day, the road reentered woodlands, though these were far more open than the wild, trackless forests I’d traversed farther north. Often I saw stumps where trees and brush had been cut, and many side tracks ran into the woods off of the main road.
On the final day I traveled it, I reached a fork in the great road. The main highway continued south, and in the distance I could see a low ridge, which I knew must be the Danevirke, the great earthen wall that marked the southern boundary of the lands of the Danes. I guided my horse onto the smaller track that lead due east.
I rounded a bend in the road and found myself at the edge of the woods. The land fell gently away below me to the shore of a great fjord, shimmering in the afternoon sun. At the water’s edge was a walled town.
I was unprepared for the size of Hedeby. I’d expected it to be larger than anything I’d seen, for even I knew it was the largest town in all of Denmark. But that foreknowledge left me unprepared for what I saw when the town first came into view.
Hedeby was located on a shallow inlet off the southern side of the Sliefjord, a long, narrow fjord that cut deep into the land on the east coast of Jutland. A wide ditch had been dug in a great half-circle from shore to shore around the entire town. Inside the ditch, the town was defended by an earthen wall topped with a wooden palisade. Outside the wall, the land was open and there were pastures where scattered sheep and cattle grazed, interspersed with fields that were still bare due to the earliness of the season. Anchored at a breakwater just offshore from the town were four longships and several smaller boats. A fifth longship was approaching up the fjord, its sail furled and its oars churning the water.
From the point where I sat astride my horse, where the roadway exited the forest and led down toward the town, I could see, visible over the top of the wall, more rooftops than I’d ever imagined existed in one place. The roofs seemed jammed together, as if the buildings there had been built so close they must be almost touching each other. I could not understand how so many people could live so close together. How could so many be fed? Could the land here provide honest work for so many? How was there enough air for all to breathe?
I’d arrived in the late afternoon, just before the change of tide. For a brief period there was no breeze blowing off the water. Trails of smoke rose into the sky above many of the roofs, forming a sooty, gray cloud that hovered over the town like the threat of a storm. It struck me as a fearful thing that so many men living together in one place possessed the ability to create such a cloud, soiling the sky itself. I wondered if it was an omen, a sign to warn me that this way lay darkness and doom.
I had fought shoulder to shoulder with Harald and his men against attackers in the night. In my flight through the forest, I had not lost myself to fear, but had managed to outwit my pursuers and defeat them. But the sight of Hedeby unmanned me now. What was I doing here? I was no warrior. I did not belong in a place like this, filled with wily town folk, and men who lived the Viking life. They’d all see me for what I was: a lost boy, without a home.
I lost my nerve then and turned my horse to ride back into the woods. There, at least, I felt at home. The forest held no unknown terrors for me. There I knew I could provide food and shelter for myself. I could make my home in the forest. It would be a spare and lonely life for certain, but one I knew I could master.
The harsh cawing of a bird startled me from my thoughts. I looked up and saw a raven perched above me in a tree just off the road. It cocked its head and stared at me with one gleaming, black eye, then cawed again. Its cry sounded like hard, mocking laughter. It shamed me.
My mother had died because she’d believed in me. She’d seen the promise of the man I might become and had given her own life to bring that promise into being. Harald, too, had died believing in me. He’d trusted that I could, and would, avenge him and the others Toke had murdered. Harald had died believing in my skills as a warrior and in my honor as a man. What right had I to doubt my mother and Harald now, and betray their trust?
I had sworn an oath to Odin to avenge my brother, Harald. Was I so weak that I would abandon it now? Was my heart so empty of courage that I would let my mother and Harald die in vain? Ravens were Odin’s messengers. If I abandoned my quest and dishonored my oath, the God would know.
A breeze sprang up, marking the change of the tide. It caught the smoke above the town and blew it away.
I turned my horse back toward the town. I did not know what I would find in Hedeby, and beyond. I knew, though, that that way lay my destiny, the fate the Norns were weaving for me. I kicked the mare into a trot and rode onward to greet it.
Glossary
berserks: Warriors in Scandinavian society who were noted for their exceptional fierceness and fearlessness in battle, and for their moody, difficult dispositions in periods of peace. Ancient Scandinavian sagas sometimes describe berserks as possessing the supernatural ability to take on the form of bears or wolves, or to assume their powers in battle. Some modern scholars have suggested that the barely controllable warriors known as berserks may have suffered from mental illness, possibly manic depression or schizophrenia.
Birka: A coastal town in Sweden that served as one of the main Viking-age trading centers. Birka formed the northern end of two long trade routes running down several rivers through the lands of modern Russia, eventually reaching the Black and Caspian Seas. Using the Eastern Road, as the routes were called, the Vikings traded with the Byzantine Empire and with the Moorish kingdoms of the Middle East that lay beyond.
broadaxe: An axe whose broad, heavy blade is ground flat on one side. A broadaxe—a tool, not a weapon like the much lighter Danish great-axe—was used to square and smooth timbers.
brynie: A shirt of mail armor.
byre: A barn or animal shed.
carl: A free man in Viking-age Scandinavian society.
chape: The tip of a sword scabbard, frequently made of metal—and, among the Vikings, often highly decorated—designed to protect the scabbard from abrasion and wear.
Danevirke: A great earthen wall built across the base of the Jutland peninsula of Denmark, from its east coast to marshy lands near its western coast, to protect the Danish lands from invasion by the Franks.
Dorestad: A Frankish port and trading center located near the convergence of the Rhine and Lek rivers, in the area now forming part of the Netherlands. Dorestad was one of the largest trade centers of early medieval Europe.
draugr: Walking dead; a dead person who was not at rest and roamed in the night.
Freyja: The Sc
andinavian Goddess of love, fertility, and healing.
Freyr: The Scandinavian God of fertility.
Frigg: The Scandinavian Goddess of marriage and the hearth; the wife of the chieftain of the Gods, Odin.
Gotars: A Scandinavian tribe that lived in Gotaland, the western region of what is now modern Sweden.
Hedeby: The largest town in ninth-century Denmark, and a major Viking-age trading center. Hedeby was located at the base of the Jutland peninsula, on the eastern side, on a fjord jutting inland from the coast.
housecarl: A warrior in the service of a nobleman.
hnefatafl: A popular Viking board game, the name of which roughly translates as “King’s Table.” The game was played on a board divided into regular squares, somewhat like a chess board. One player set his pieces up in the center of the board and attempted to move his king to the board’s outer rim. The other player started with his pieces surrounding the “king’s” pieces, and attempted to capture the king before it could escape.
i-viking: To go raiding.
jarl: A very high ranking chieftain in Scandinavian society who ruled over a large area of land on behalf of the king.
Jutland: The peninsula that forms the mainland of modern and ancient Denmark, named after the Jutes, one of the ancient Danish tribes.
Limfjord: A huge, protected fjord that runs completely across the northern tip of the Jutland peninsula, providing a protected passage between the Baltic and North Seas.
longship: The long, narrow ship used for war by the peoples of Viking-age Scandinavia. Longships had shallow drafts, allowing them to be beached or to travel up rivers, and were designed to be propelled swiftly by either sail or rowing. They were sometimes also called dragonships, because many longships had carved heads of dragons decorating the stempost of the bow.
niddingsvaark: Work of infamy; the dishonorable acts of a Nithing.
Nithing: One who was not considered a person because he has no honor.
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