by Asotir
Swan’s Path
by asotir
Eartherea Books
Here and Beyond
copyright 1975, 2016 by asotir
Swan’s Path is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License. This means you’re free to copy, distribute and transmit the work, or to adapt the work into any form or media, so long as you give asotir credit for what we did (though not in any way that suggests that we endorse you or your use of this work), and so long as you ‘share alike’—if you alter, transform, or build upon this work, then you distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license as this one.
Table of Contents
Swan-Maiden
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Swan-Shift
Thief’s Thrall
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Valkyrie
One
Two
Afterword
Swan-Maiden
One
THERE WAS A storm, and it was long ago. It gathered over shores where the sun burns the open sands, and it moved north. There the wind and waves were colder, and the water silver-gray, and through the water wove jagged islands all of ice, slick with streaming rain. And the storm drove deeper into the north. And there in its path beyond all lands, a land rose out of the depths of the sea, gleaming and dark; and that was Iceland.
Murkily, drawing from the sea, the storm drifted across the land: over pasture, rock, stream and sand. In the gray daylight much of the landscape could still be seen: reek of stream billowing from hot springs, yellowish pastures scarred by braiding streams, desolate choked expanses of black and moss-green lava, sand, gravel, ash. That was not a land of little men but of risen rock, volcanoes, falls, mountains and wastes: an all but empty land, unbounded in its carelessness.
The storm passed above upturned boats of fishermen shining like wooden whales stranded beyond the tide-marks; it passed above the rare, distant mounds of sod that were the farmers’ halls. It crossed the rocky wastes up to the high valleys. Heavily the storm hemmed in the hills and alpine fells beyond. Slowly the rain wet and laved the faces of those fells, basalt, granite, iceclad, as severe and as untrodden as the moon’s thin face. There across the highest peaks, over mountaintops, gorges and volcanoes alike, lay a mighty glacier, like a small kingdom. Land of frost-giants, not of men.
The rain gathered in gray pools upon the glacial ice, ice a hundred thousand years old; as old almost as the island itself. And the rainwater rose above the tops of the hollows and spilt down across the glacier’s steps, down past caves used by dying outlaws and runaway thralls, down to meet the braiding streams, down to run again into the cold dark sea.
* * *
FEW WENT ABROAD that even. Only one shape could be seen to move, tiny and weak-seeming from the heights. That was the shape of a man; and that man struggled to haul a small cart along a muddy, stony track out of the fells. The man’s legs gleamed all wet with mud, and his cloak was shabby. Nought of the face could be seen save for the braids of a long gray bear angling beneath the broad brim of his hat. The man’s form was stooped and twisted, and the hands that gripped the harness leads were cracked and spotted and misshapen. But still there showed between the swollen knuckles cordlike sinews that once had used great power.
The cart groaned and clattered as it rocked along behind him. On both of its ox-hide sides alongside a crude likeness of a raven were bound odd things of iron and bone, ladles and knives and charms of stone and amber and colored glass.
At length in the murk the old one halted and shrugged free of the harness. He straightened, and kneaded with cracked wet knuckles the small of his back. He had an old, old face, scarred and shattered like a ledge of rock between the tide-marks after too many hard winters. The broad nose was broken, and one eye was gone, but the wide mouth was turned in a sly grin.
The path there ran by a stream that cut deep and jagged through sand and stone. Upon the far side the stone rose sharply from the bubbling lips of the stream to a rude and unsafe peak some nine ells above the bank’s top. On one face of the basalt, down by the grass, some passing man once had scratched the sign of Thor’s hammer and a few faded runes: maybe it had been a curse, or maybe he had wanted to lure back lost luck. High above it, on the thin stone peak, was perched a lone and slender shape. And that was the shape of a woman.
She stood quite still upon the stone: and she looked skyward. Her long, nightdark hair, heavy with water, fell down her back and over the breast of her sodden gown. She wore no cloak. Her body was straight and her hands hung moveless at her flanks. She did not move, nor look down about her. It was as if she too were of stone, like the basalt growing out of the hem of her gown.
For awhile the old one did not speak; then, putting his hands to his face, he shouted up to the woman: and she answered. The old one shouted, but the woman answered in a low voice all but lost in the rain’s soft groan, as if she cared not whether he heard her.
‘Ho, mistress! Are you woman or shield-maiden up there so high?’
‘Where are you bound?’
‘I am looking for Hof. I seek Olaf, for he is said to be a godi with a good eye for the worth of things.’
‘Olaf is away.’
‘What of Olaf’s new wife, then? Men often look, but women often buy.’
‘What do you have?’
‘Oh, I have many goodly things. Goods for offerings, fair spears from abroad, sharp swords, and charms with Thor’s hammer.’
‘Go away. Gudruda will buy nought of that.’
‘This is a hard word of yours. Still, what of you, High One? Have you need of nothing?’
‘I have no pennies to spend. Go away, old man. Look to some other stead, there is no need of you at Hof.’
To this the old one had no word at first. Then in a lower voice he said, ‘You speak as though all the folk there are dead, mistress.’
She shrugged. ‘Soon enough, maybe.’
The old man stooped and gathered up the leads of his cart. The little cart rocked and groaned and clattered, but soon enough the sound was lost in the rain and the rushing of the stream. In time the old pedlar and his cart faded into the rainy darkness. Then it was night, and all that could be seen were the hills and fells black and shapeless against the dull dark sky.
For a long while afterward the woman stayed on the stone. The rain was soft and heavy, but chill. Had it flashed and roared and riven, then men would have said it was the sound of Thor’s hammer whenas it crushed the skulls of mountain giants; had it soothed and caressed, then would they have named it the seed of Frey; if it had moaned and wailed, then would they have called it Freyja’s tears. But this was only rain, and it fell down in the night.
The woman’s shoulders rose and fell. Had the winds been strong, then she would surely have been thrown off that slight, slippery perch and dashed upon the dark sharp rocks below. Slowly she bore out her arms to either side, palm-upwards, so that the water streamed off her sleeves. She stretched out her arms, stiff and shuddering, for she held them there long. Her face she bore back even farther, until it was into the very face of the starless night she stared, blinking as the raindrops pelted her eyes. Then she crouched down and took hold of the stone with both her hands and, very carefully, began to clamber down the far side.
A goodly pony was tied in the slight shelter of the rocks; its shaggy many was thick and wet
as grass-roots. The woman stroked the pony’s long muzzle and climbed into the hide saddle, awkward against the gown’s sodden weight. She sat loosely in the saddle and let the reins trail from her wan thin fingers. Behind pony and rider the rocks fell away into the mountains and were lost. They went away from the stream, down away from the hills, and for awhile the woman rode aimlessly, as if she too were searching. In time though, she let the reins fall looselier, and the pony fared on as if it knew whither it should go.
Now it was not dark but black. Wayfarers passing within four steps of each other would not have been seen. The rain fell more heavily, and it did not groan but sang with a weighty rhythm. The woman rocked to and fro in the saddle, her head low, the long, wet hair swaying slowly forth and back. Then a voice called out in the darkness, and she raised her head.
She halted the pony and sat upright, listening. The rain fell. Then the voice called out again. The woman looked from side to side sharply.
Again the voice hailed the darkness. It was closer now, and the woman seemed to sigh, and she urged her pony to go toward the sound of the voice.
The shouts grew out of blindness. It was a high-pitched man’s voice. It called out, ‘Swanhild, Swanhild!’ It was very near now.
The woman rode on, and a dim shape broke from the rainy black. ‘I am here, Erik.’
There was only one man there. Swiftly he turned in his saddle: the song of the rain had hidden the sound of her pony’s approach.
‘Swanhild?’ he ventured, coming nearer. ‘Is it you? Where have you been?’
She smiled unwarmly. ‘Did you hunt me, then?’
‘Why else should I fare abroad on such a night? We were all worried at what might have befallen you. Gudruda asked about you.’
That was a young man, and a lean and strong, with the beginnings of a dirty yellow beard sprouting from his chin. Over his left shoulder he wore a big embroidered wool cloak: this he offered her, but she would not have it. She put her pony in beside his, and together they rode down the muddy trail. They rode awhiles in silence. Swanhild went ahead.
When they had come aways, Erik asked, somewhat warily, ‘What were you doing out here in the night, Swanhild? Did you look for your father?’
She looked back at him. ‘Has he come back?’
‘No, not when I set out. All the men speak of it. The womenfolk grow fearful. Five nights now have we looked for his homecoming. Do you think maybe this storm held him back?’
‘This rain would not hold Olaf up.’
‘So Thorgrim said. But he also said—’ Erik lowered his voice now, so that it was all but lost in the rain—‘he said it may have come to blows. He does not trust Njal to hold to his oath.’
‘Nor do I.’
‘Then do you think it might have run to fighting? While Thorold lived there was peace; now, if there is a feud—Do you think truly it might run to that, Swanhild?’
‘Whatever may come, you can be sure my father will be equal to any deeds of those men of Njal’s, Erik. You need not fear.’
‘I am not afraid. But I would not seek it either.’
‘That is the word of a wise man,’ she answered. ‘But Thorgrim I think is not so wise. This afternoon I watched him sharpen his axe and put a new nail in his spear: he was singing then. If only your beard were long enough to braid maybe you would be unwise too.’
He had nought to say to that.
At length they reached a cluster of long low masses: those grew out of the dark side of a hill. Side by side the halls grew out from the earth. Swanhild and Erik rode through a gate in the turf-covered stone home-fence and came into the muddy courtyard, or garth, between the buildings. They came to a halt before a storeshed and there hung up their bridles and hide saddles. The ponies they fed hay, then let wander free.
‘You know, Swanhild,’ offered Erik then, ‘My mother has been very worried over Olaf. She grows fearful lest some harm may have befallen him. You would not say aught to trouble her, would you? I hoped for this time to ask you, now we are alone. Could you say some words to her to cheer her? That would be great comfort to her, above all if you say them.’
She walked out of the shed and waited for him to close and tie the doors again. ‘Yes, I will do that, Erik.’
‘You promise?’
‘Yes. I promise.’
‘That is good, then. It is a kindly act.’ They walked along the stones set in the mud toward the door of the main hall. There Swanhild stopped.
‘I have just now remembered my need. Go you on in and I will follow in a moment.’
‘Yes, of course,’ he muttered. He stepped down into the stone well before the door and opened it. A swirl of lighted smoke and the buzz of many voices girt him and drew him in; and as swiftly ended with the shutting of the door.
Swanhild went past the hall: came to the stone wall of the pen. There she sat and stayed for some minutes, her head held low. Below her the hogs nestled deep in the mud against one another for warmth, scarcely in the shelter of the birchbark overhang. Swanhild sat and watched them, the chill rain streaming down her hair and the back of her gown. The wind shifted then, and she shivered. She stepped down off the wall and walked back to the hall. There, before her at the bottom of the stone steps leading into the ground, stood the main door on the threshold-stone.
That was a door deep-girthed and of solid oak, carved richly with shapes of beasts and warriors and patterns of mingling loops and horns and paws. It was old, that door: rare and prized in Iceland, where the only trees were stunted birch and willow unfit for building. Hardbein Oxen-Hand had let it be hewn and worked in Norway, in the North More. There Hardbein had lived as a landed man under King Hunthjof; but King Harald Hairfair slew King Hunthjof and laid the More-shires under him.
Hardbein Oxen-Hand then had that choice, to live under King Harald and be his man without odal-rights and pay the king a tax each year, or leave Norway. Hardbein chose to leave, and went west. Many others chose as Hardbein had; that was the founding of Iceland, and called the Age of Settlement.
Hardbein took all his goods in three broad ships, and sailed along the coast of the new land until he saw what pleased him: cast overboard this door and the highseat roof-trees, like as many others did. The highseat washed up at one spot, and the door at another. Hardbein Oxen-hand then had fire borne all about the land in between, and took it for his own. On the upward right corner the door still bore the blade-mark of that battle wherein Hardbein’s brother Sigurd had been slain, when King Harald’s men had come to More. Not alone had Sigurd died.
Swanhild took hold the ring with her chill wet hand and pushed her great-grandfather’s door inward on its great wooden hinges. The bluster of the night stepped into the hall with the young dark woman in its midst, and the draft blew up smoke from the open fires, making many blink and cough and curse. But then she swung the door close behind her, and they looked up and knew her.
Two
A SHOUT SOUNDED when she entered, and a big bearlike man came nigh. He stood so tall his head seemed to duck beneath the rafters, and his face was ugly with the marks of years’ striving against stone, wave, wind and man. In his thickly-braided beard streaks of gray shone amongst the yellow-brown: a great-limbed, big-bellied, horn-in-hand man he was and had ever been, that wore his axe by his side even here in a friend’s hall. He was Thorgrim Thorleik’s son, and he was foremost of all of Olaf’s thingmen. He loomed over the blackhaired shivering woman, his great body shutting out the light and warmth of the open fire beyond.
‘If you were not your father’s daughter, it would go the worse for you,’ he growled. ‘Where are your manners, that you do not serve your father’s guests with mead? You have strange ways, Swanhild: that is the Finn’s-blood for sure. Saw you aught of your father out there?’
Swanhild shook her head; pushed gently past him to seek the fire’s warmth. The heavy, bitter smoke, ill-dispelled through the smoke-hole in the roof, stung the girl’s eyes to tears and blinkings.
‘Ta
ke you mead to fire your breast!’ Thorgrim said, but she shook her head. ‘Ah yes, I had forgotten: Olaf’s daughter will have no drink! Yet that was never Olaf’s way.’
He stood behind her and gazed into the ale-horn, an ornate and rune-wrought ox-horn. ‘Why did he not take me along with him,’ he grumbled. ‘I am not so old I could not have matched a few of those luckless wights. And where went you, if that is not too bold a question?’
She cast her eyes back at him briefly: dark slanting eyes with long curling lashes: Finn’s-eyes: the eyes of her mother. ‘Hrafnarroddar rode I: looked down on the Hrafn.’
Now Thorgrim pulled on his beard and gaped. ‘What foolishness! Know you not that the holes of Svinafell hold outlaws, and berserks and dead men’s ghosts besides? Only Odin astride Hlidskjalf could know what you might have run across.’
‘I met with nought,’ she answered, shuddering over the baking heat of red embers.
‘Ox with two legs, Thorgrim, will you stop badgering the girl and look upon her state? Her clothes are wet through. If she does not sicken of this to the death it will be through no deed of yours!’
That was a short broad woman, that had shouldered her way from the far side of the hall. Her gown was stained with flour and dried fish-stew; her braided yellow hair was mostly bound beneath a wimple. From her neck swung a small brass charm in the shape of a square cross, and at her waist swung the big bundle of the house-keys. That was Gudruda, the hall’s mistress and Olaf’s second wife. She hemmed in the slender Swanhild with her bulk, fussing over her state. Then the girl turned upon her, and Gudruda left off.
‘There my dear, you look wretched; even the braids of your hair have come undone,’ she muttered, somewhat warily. Over the girl’s thin shoulders she drew a thick woolen blanket. ‘I have just seen to Erik, but you are in even a worse state. Come along and we will see what can be done.—Rannveig, put a kettle of broth over the fire for Swanhild.’
Gudruda tugged at Swanhild’s arm: the girl yielded, and let herself be led down past the long-fire to the household beds beyond, that were built against the wood-covered walls, beneath the low-falling rafters. Gudruda sat Swanhild down upon the bed and drew the linen curtain: then began peeling off the girl’s sodden gown and undershifts. Those she gathered into a great dripping ball and handed to one of the maids, that she should hang them on the chains beside the open fire.
Swanhild made a tent of the large blanket and huddled wordless on the bed. Gudruda brought closer a lamp: iron bowl of fish-oil with a moss wick, set on a tapering iron rod of curling bands. She thrust the point into the earthen floor where it would give the best light. Rannveig came in softly with a bowl of hot broth, that the young woman took and drank. Gudruda put another blanket about her shoulders and rubbed her dry. Swanhild set the empty bowl onto the floor and sat still and yielding in her stepmother’s hands. Now Gudruda took the long, thick hair into her hands and gently wrung streams of water out of it. She took up another towel and began rubbing Swanhild’s head, halting every now and then to see how her work sped. Swanhild sat gazing at the weave of the linen curtain, her eyes black, giving back no light, like two cracks in the glaciers on the fells in the dim light of a new and frosty moon.
‘You are too thin, surely, stepdaughter. What man will sue for so thin a maid? And that you go abroad on such wild nights as this makes your looks no better. In this will I counsel you: so my mother bade me. Eat for a whole month fresh butter; eat for the second month pork; and in the third month eat you cream-cakes. Then will your form wax round and pleasing to a man. It is no mark of health, this thinness of yours.’
Sitting so, Swanhild in her nakedness seemed some stark thing from the barren fells, foreign and unsettling here within this hall filled with warm smoke, happy smell of burning wood and peat, and the richly rounded carvings of the wainscoting. Her flesh, deathly blue-white from the long winter’s lack of sun and the coldness of the rain, took on none of the golden glow of the lamp before her. That chill whiteness was broken only by the darkness about her eyes and her hair, deeper than night, and the untold riddle of the place crowded between her legs, whereof only a few of the curling strands might be seen.
There was little of womanly roundness about Swanhild’s body, as Gudruda well had said: no round folds of butter-fat, no heaviness of milk in those flat, peaked breasts, no wide rolling hips to bring forth many children. But even so that was a woman’s body, and no man would have gainsaid that. The boyishness about the hips and thin limbs only made the deeper femaleness lurking there all the more sharply felt and longed-for. Her leanness held the comeliness of the glacier’s ice. None would call her a handsome woman: but in the right light, holding her head and shoulders even so, she was lovely, dreadfully lovely. And yet that loveliness too, was pitiless, and made even those who liked her somewhat ill at ease. And as for suitors, she had had none since long years back.
‘How silly, to be abroad on such a night. Whatever put in you such wildness? We were worried to forgetfulness. As if your father’s being away were not enough for us to think on! What would he have done, had he been here to know of this?’
‘Understood,’ Swanhild said.
‘Yes, so speaks a wayward child. Thorgrim said you looked for your father. Did you—did you see aught of him?’
‘No.’
The older woman sighed. ‘Then you think all will be well?’
‘No.’
‘What do you mean? Oh Swanhild, do you think it came to blows?’
‘No,’ answered Swanhild, shaking her hair free. ‘I do not think that likely.’
‘Ah, I am so glad that you say that! You are a wise girl, Swanhild. You know your father best of us all. I have prayed many times for Olaf’s safekeeping: I am sure my words were heeded. After all, godi Njal Thoroldsson is said to be a man clever at law, not a fighter—and he holds to the Christ as well. If sheep are missing, then I hold it likeliest they were drowned by a burst of the Jokull or mired in the Skeidararsands rather than stolen. It is the hardness of our men, and that they are unknowing of the Christ. Olaf did not warrant those battles. He and Njal are two peacebearers, and I am sure they have agreed to atonement between them for the wounded and dead. Yes, maybe they hold now to a new friendship, like that one held before between Olaf and Thorold.’
The younger woman turned, looking from her slanting eyes into her stepmother’s simple broad face, that held the lines of all these nights’ worry. For his second wife Olaf Sigurdarson had picked a middle-aged, capable woman, one handsome enough to match his standing. Her first husband, Erik’s father, had been slain in a feud three winters earlier. When she had first come to the household early that winter, then there had been bickerings and bitter words between Gudruda and Swanhild: then Olaf had brought them to peace.
Folk spoke of Gudruda as a good cook, kindly mistress, and a capable handler of accounts, good with sums and people but not too close-handed with either. She was far-told for her open-handedness with guests, and most of all when wandering gangrel women came to the stead; with them she was kindliest of all, and was much praised for it. She also swore by the Christ, and that was as yet no common thing in Iceland.
Swanhild rose, shrugged off the blankets and let the long heavy braid of her hair fall down into the slight hollow between her breasts. Glossy and deep as night was that hair: for that reason she was sometimes called Swanhild the Black. She knelt and pulled out a chest from beneath the bed: drew forth an undershift of light blue linen, sea-borne stuff, very finely woven, and a dark purple dress.
‘Oh yes: I am sure you are right, stepmother,’ she said as she dressed. ‘Once my father told me of a time when he was young and someone had stolen one of his sheep. From what he told me, I think that was a sickly lamb not worth much: still, he went to see the man to see what sort of atonement he might get for it. He went alone, and took no men with him; but he bore along his sword and spear. Now the thief was the elder of two brethren: they had but come from the Hebrides, and both of them
had the name of men who liked to have their own way in whatever they set their minds to.—Maybe you have heard the tale?—There had been three suits against these men, and two had been dropped because of flaws in the proceedings, and the third was uncollected. The elder was gift-named Gap-Tooth because of the tooth he lacked in the front of his mouth. To him my father went: but Gap-Tooth stood in his own field with his brother beside him. He would not gainsay the theft but rather boasted of it, and spoke of how sweet that lamb had tasted. Then he gave my father three pennies of bronze and said that was atonement enough.
‘My father took the coins, and was very mild about it. He agreed that that should be compensation enough. Then he gave two of the coins back to Gap-Tooth: who frowned and did not know the cause of that. Olaf my father said then, ‘These two are naming-gift from me to you, for I have a new name for you. No longer will you be called Gap-Tooth but instead Gap-Brow.’ With that he took out his spear and hurled it between the thief’s eyes; burst open his brains and killed him on the spot. Then said my father to the dead man’s brother, ‘I am sorry for that, but you can surely see I had no choice after he boasted how sweet my lamb tasted. But I am not a hard man, and will give you fair atonement for your brother’s life.’ Then he threw down the third penny in the dirt at the foot of Gap-Brow’s brother. Of course he had to kill him too, but there were no suits against my father for that; and greatly grew his standing by this deed. So you see, Gudruda stepmother, what sort of a man it is you have wedded,’ the girl ended, with a slight smile that showed her teeth. ‘There is nought you need worry over. Olaf was ever a man able to fend for himself: and those were hard men, mankillers; and these of Njal’s are only womanish Christ’s-men, after all.’
Thereat Swanhild pinned the second brooch to her purple gown and shoved the chest back beneath the bed with her shoe. She went out through the curtain to the warmth by the long-fire. Behind her Gudruda sat very still upon the bed; and the starkest look of dread spread over her face.
Round the long-fire and over the earthen floor ran the hall-benches, where sat most of the household and the guests. From the highseat to the northern gable and back to the main, or men’s door, the men were sitting; and they drank mead and told tales and verses. Thorgrim sat beside the highseat at chess with Skeggi Einarson, another of Olaf’s followers. On the soft leather board the ornate bone pieces were moved across squares of stitched hide. That was Thorgrim’s own set, that he bore rolled-up behind his saddle wherever he went. Now Thorgrim grinned and made a move: Skeggi looked down sharply, worry in his brow. The women sat beyond the highseat, on a raised flooring of wooden planks: some knitted, and others softly gossiped; one young woman held a bairn to her swollen breast. Quieter they all held themselves this night than was their wont. Between the groups of men and women the oaken highseat, crawling with carvings and rich-wrought runes, reared up big and empty.
Swanhild sat apart from the rest, on the red-and-black lava at the fireside. Below her the cinder-strewn rock hemmed in the long pit of the fire, warm to her feet; the ruddy glow of the low flames gave scant color to her face, sharp and bleak as bone. The men and women’s talk blended round her in a mild buzz. Among the men sat young Erik Gudrudarson, new-dressed in dry garb, watching the play of Thorgrim. When he glanced her way Swanhild looked away. The heat of the flames rose drowsily into her face, causing her to narrow the flattened slants of her eyes. They were strange hard eyes, that those who liked her not called, behind her back, ‘thief’s-eyes.’
A knot of children sat on the earth not far from her, clustered about the knees of Orvar-Odd. The old man sat with his back against the wall, swords and shields and axes pegged on one side, pots and kettles and ladles on the other. He was telling tales to the children, of witches and giants and trolls, and unhappy ghosts that rode the rafters in the winter-nights.
The air rose shuddering from the layers of coals and peat-squares, streaming upward with orange-red arms, to stroke the big, blackened soapstone cauldrons. Hung upon chains above the fire, Swanhild’s dripping shift and gown looked like two ill-formed, dream-wrought ravens: Odin’s ravens, Huginn and Muninn. The blue smoke rose to weave flickering mazy patterns upon the rafter-shadowed turf ceiling. So thick and snug was that turf, that it let in none of the cold or wind or wet from without: the lazy smoke twirled in answer only to those gusts that entered through the smoke-hole and the gable at the hall’s end. Old was this hall now: many years had gone by since Hardbein had built it here. The roots of the turf dangled through the roof-bark, and the rafters creaked with the weight of the rare winter snows. Soon it would need to be built anew, out of timber shipped from the high forests of Norway, and peat-bricks from the bogs nearby.
From time to time a man or woman would feel the urge and slip out the women’s-door at the back of the hall to go to the privy: then the silence washed like a sea-wave down the hall, and all eyes sought the shadows thrown across the main door. But it did not open. Then the talk began again, from the men on one side and the women on the other, and wove like drowsy land-winds over Olaf’s daughter’s head.
‘And did you know,’ said Orvar-Odd, ‘in the old nights men were not buried in the earth in howes? Then was there never need to wait until the ground was soft at winter’s end, as Njal had to wait to bury his father Thorold.’
‘Then how did they do their dead ones?’ asked one little girl. She played with the braided ends of her bright yellow hair as she lay on the floor.
‘With fire,’ answered Orvar-Odd. Gently he stroked the silver flax of his scanty beard. ‘Yes, and most of all was it done when a hero fell. Then it was a great thing. Then they should bear away his corpse from the wold-trough and lay it upon a bier. He should be new-garbed in armor and sea-borne robes of fine workmanship: they should comb out his hair and braid his beard, and put bright ribands in his hair above his brows. Beside him went food and drink, drinking-horn, shield, sword and axe. Even gold they laid there, the down-stuff of worms. And if his death were fair, and if he had been mighty in his life, then should they slay his favorite horse in offering to Odin, Lord of Hosts, and lay it there beside him. That was for the Hel-ride.
‘And all this was done on a ship or ship-wrought ring of stones nearby the waves. Thus could he cross the rivers too high to ford. And then they would pick out one of his concubines to die with him and give him company. Sometimes she went willingly; else they must pick her out by lot. And they dressed her in fine bright linens, and put rings on her arms and blossoms in her hair, and gave her ale that was spell-wrought and had no pain, and cut her throat there.
‘Then should they invoke all the gods, but most of all the king of the gallows: Odin, that has his pick of all those men fallen in battle or weapon-slain. Little he cared for us, old blind ones or weaklings dead of sickness. So the bier was set afire, and they made blood-offerings. And as high as the reek of that blaze rose into heaven, so great they said had been the heart of that man in his life.
‘Of course, that was long ago,’ said old Orvar-Odd to the little children—‘and far away as well, in Norway and the Swede-realm where forests grow as thick as grass. Here in Iceland we are too wood-poor to do any such thing. And anyway it went out of use long ago. Now they build up howes to hold a man down—you know of them, they are the grass mounds on the Svinafell. And it seems to me that few are the men nowanights that die seemly deaths for such an end. Only the lucky get what they want from life, children, and even they are far from happy. The life of a man starts shiny and bright from his mother, with a cry; but it ends in silence, dry and wrinkly and wormy.’
‘But what about the Valkyries?’ asked the little girl. ‘Yes, and the heroes!’ the others clamored, so that Orvar-Odd smiled, and let nod his head.
‘Yes, there were heroes, favored of the gods. And the greatest of these, outside of Sigurd Signison, were the champions of King Hrolf. Those men did not die in their beds, be sure! Their deeds are not unremembered; nor were they overlooked by the High Ones. They knew their ends,
and faced them. And so in their last battle, fought they as they had never done in life before, and they great fighters all.
‘And above them, over feast-field of wolves and the fiery billow’s-steeds, would gather the Choosers: deathless maidens on winged mounts, byrnie-clad and shaft-wielding. They obeyed none but the Hanged One, old gray Odin himself: and so gave the win or withheld it, broke hosts and gave men battle-fury so that they knew not what they fought.
‘Of course, those fierce maids come not to Iceland. But long ago, in the firths of Norway, in the Dane-land, in the Swede-realm, they were common as pedlars. They gave luck to their heroes and at times, in troll-ridden forest glades, put on the guise of Swan-maidens, and bathed in icy pools at midnight. Then would they rise and put on again their mail, and fare to battle. An when a hero’s time was done, then would he be borne up heavenward by the maidens, over Bifrost the bridge from Middle-earth, into Asgard where the High Ones dwelt. And there would he feast with all the others, and eat boar-flesh, and do battle in hosts each day, and so be slain. Yet evenward they rose again, and came in fellowship again to Odin’s hall, Valhalla. Mighty kings and jarls led them: such as every hero you have ever heard the tale of. Nor was there pain there, though a thousand died each day. So it is said they took their pleasure at their lord’s command, and readied themselves for the last of all battles, the Battle of Vigrid’s Field…’
Three
THE SOUND OF Orvar-Odd’s voice lingered between the high rafters of the hall amidst the smoke and fluttering moths. Even those children, usually so talkative, were still: for these were wondrous and impossible tales to them, of great battles and treasure-taking; and all they had known were sheep-shearing, and cow-milking, and taking in the hay in summer.
Raven-headed Swanhild lay back against the dark heavy stone, lifting her angular face toward the ceiling. The thick black braid fell in a curling loop down round her long slender throat, past the brooches over the front of her gown, moving quite slightly with the rise and play of her breasts. Her long eyes were slits, and through the curls of heat her face was seen to shudder; yet her lips were closed. Strangely still and calm had she borne herself that night: as if the soul of her had been drained out in the bleakness of the storm, and only the body come again to her father’s hall. Now her eyes were shut heavy, as if she slept: her head was fallen back and showed her nostrils, wide-seeming and dark. Then she sat bolt-upright and her eyes went open. A sudden heavy knocking sounded from the main door.
Three times the knock sounded, and leaped loudly down the hall’s length.
The men stood to their feet. Thorgrim laid his hands upon his axe-haft. Others also took down weapons from the wall. Rannveig, one of the thrall-women, gathered the children and took them grudging back deeper into the hall.
The great door swung outwards, and in leapt wind and chill and wet, blowing cinders and smoke from the firebed: and a great dark shape bundled in, manlike and fierce.
It stepped across the threshold-stone and pulled shut the door with a bang. The moan of the wind went out with that bang; so that, for a moment, there was quiet. The stranger stood bent over, face lowered, water dripping off his cloak and hair. Then he lifted up his head and looked them over there with a dark and angry eye.
‘Drink,’ he growled. ‘Drink and shelter from the storm!’
He was not tall, but he was broad: and that not all fat either. His dirty hair was dark with wet; his unbraided beard straggled down his chest. He shook himself, and the water flew from his hair and beard, as if he had been some fierce mongrel Dog upon two legs. He slapped his cloak upon the floor and stepped up to the long-fire. The men gave way for him, wordless at his boldness. The women stood far back, close together in a circle, the children peering out from between their skirts. Only Olaf’s daughter did not move at the stranger’s coming, but only sat, watching him with a faint wonder in her eyes.
The man leaned out his bulk over the ember-bed, wringing out his beard with two meaty hands. The water fell hissing in the fire, and waverings of steam swept up about his face. As he rubbed his hands and blew out breath he looked at Swanhild where she sat below him. She said nought, but met his look.
‘Hello, stranger,’ said Thorgrim behind, ‘if you are not an outlaw or enemy of this hall.’
The stranger threw back his hairy head. ‘Have you no ale?’ he asked. Big as Thorgrim was, he seemed a weakling beside the stranger. ‘Have you no mead to warm my belly? By the Christ, it is chill out there!’
Swanhild stood, went to the cask, and filled a cup. She bore it to the stranger: he took it and threw it back into his gaping mouth: smacked his lips, loosed a big belch.
‘Oh, but that’s good!’ he groaned, turning so that his buttocks might get some portion of the warmth. Catching Thorgrim’s mistrustful stare, he barked a short laugh. ‘No, I’m no outlaw, if that’s what you’re so fearful of!—Not yet at least: after the Assembly this summer, well, then I’ll see if I’ve any luck left still! My name is Hrap: come from the West Firths, and before that the Hebrides saw my birth. Don’t ask my father’s name, for you know as much of him as I! Do you have dry linens, or is guest-kindliness not your way?’
He squatted down at the edge of the fire and held his arms forth flat in front of him. The glow of the embers made his skin all coppery and reddish, as if it had been scalded. From beneath his brows he stared at Swanhild. She held again her seat by the firebed, somewhat farther down.
‘I left my pony in your stables and gave him hay,’ he said: ‘I’ll work to pay it if you want. Have I missed my goal, or are you Olaf Sigurdarson?’
Thorgrim shook his head, and sat again beside the highseat. ‘Olaf is away. I am chief of his supporters: Thorgrim is my name. Yonder sits Olaf’s wife Gudruda.’
‘And she, the black proud one, who is she?’
Swanhild looked away.
‘That is Swanhild, Olaf’s-daughter. What did you come here, Hrap, to seek of Olaf?’
‘What do I want?’ The big man laughed mournfully. ‘Some would call it a small thing: only my life, that’s all. As for this night, well, I would have stopped before, had I found one who would shelter me. When will Olaf return?’
‘That we know not. Soon is my wish. What have you to do with him?’
‘Hrap shrugged. ‘You look a man to understand. From the tales they tell of Olaf Sigurdarson, I deemed him the sort of man that would offer me haven. And I guessed the East might be a place of better luck for me. I slew a man back there.’
‘That is serious.’ Thorgrim frowned. ‘Murder or manslaughter?’
‘It was no secret deed, if that is what you ask!’
‘Was he kin or foe?’
‘No kin of mine. I’ve no kin in this land; anyway, not yet.’
What name bore he? I mind me of one who spoke of a recent killing—a pedlar that came by here.’
‘Gisli was his name.’
‘Fornald’s son?’
Hrap nodded over the coals.
‘Aye, I recall it now,’ mused Thorgrim. ‘Fornald is a mighty chieftain in those parts, man. He is not often thwarted in his wishes. Wasn’t Gisli his only son?’
‘Two others has he, but bastard-born, and ill-liked.’
‘Aye, those are powerful folk. How was the killing done?’
‘Fairly and in equal battle. Gisli attacked me.’
‘Hm. That is not the tale I heard; but if it is true, then your course should be a simple one: dig up Gisli’s corpse and summon him in suit for the attack. Then Fornald will not have the right to sue you for compensation. Still, you ask for Olaf’s aid in this, not mine. You are welcome to stay here until he returns if Gudruda gives her leave.’
‘I do not give it!’
Gudruda had come down the longfire to where she might overhear their words: but at the saying of the intruder’s name she had stiffened. Now she stepped forth, picked the wet cloak up off the stone and held it out to Hrap.
‘Thorgrim, you may have forgotten who this
man is, but I have not. Hrap he names himself, but I think he is better known as Killing-Hrap! Three poor men has he slain in the West Firths, and when Gisli Fornaldarson came to ask for atonement on behalf of the widows, Killing-Hrap gave him guest-cup, then slew him when he had put weapons aside! It is no wonder to me he might find shelter in no other hall. Go your way now, Killing-Hrap: you’ll find no shelter here!’
Hrap muttered, standing over Gudruda like a frost-giant above a dwarf. Then with one heavy hand he reached down and took up the little brass cross that hung from her neck. ‘By this sign I call upon you for help and shelter,’ he said. ‘Are we not all brethren?’
‘Were they your brethren you slew westaway, when you had stolen their wethers?’ Gudruda asked, and snatched back the charm. ‘What charity did you show their widows, Killing-Hrap?’
‘You will not call me by that name, goodwife.’
‘Beware that you threaten here,’ said Thorgrim, and held his axe in readiness. Hrap saw that look in his eye and stepped back a pace: put his hand down and fingered at the peace-strings that bound his sword in sheath. Gudruda stepped between them.
‘Thorgrim, this is not your hall,’ she said. ‘And now, Killing-Hrap, I shall call folk whatsoever I wish while I am in my husband’s hall; and until my husband should return, no one but I will choose who shall get guesting here. Now go, and take with you your murdering ways.’
But now Thorgrim drew Gudruda a ways apart, and muttered to her these words: ‘This were unseemly, to cast any man out, how vile he be soever, and above all on such a night as this. But a great-hearted man will offer meat to his bitterest foe, though that try his temper to the uttermost.’
But to that Gudruda answered in no small voice, ‘That I am not a man, and I will cast this one out, and above all on such a night as this. But there is a thing called righteousness, and I will try to cleave to that. Now put up all these words of yours, Thorgrim, for in this I’ll not be moved no whit.’
Before this fierceness, in so plump and mild-seeming a woman, Hrap stood unsure. The menfolk saw him waver and stepped in closer, weapons in hand. Then he shrugged; slung the dripping cloak across his sword side, and stepped backward to the door. But at the threshold he stopped and eyed them again. They stood, all the men and Gudruda, and the women far behind. But only one still sat, on the stones at the fireside.
‘You there, proud one,’ Killing-Hrap called. ‘It seems to me you have as much say here as any other. Now, many will say I was never a beggar-man, but you I will ask. Will you give me leave to abide here?’
Swanhild looked up at him, her eyes wide and dark. She looked to Gudruda, Thorgrim, and back to the stranger. She sat quite still, as if become stone, while all the others looked to her: and so a moment passed.
‘Be it thus then,’ Hrap growled. With a heavy shoe he kicked the door wide open behind him, letting in all the rain and wind. And he laughed gloomily, to see all the folk within a-shivering. ‘You have withheld from me shelter and peace,’ he said against them, ‘clean against all the uses of the land. Now you put me out on a night like this. But maybe, Gudruda Sharp-Tongue, there are others, and their ways are somewhat unlike these of yours: maybe too there will come some day when I may do you some other good turn.’
With that he strode out into the night, leaving the great door open behind him and the storm blowing in. Thorgrim stepped upon the threshold-stone and peered out into the blackness. ‘If this were a dry night we might soon have flame for our bedmate,’ he muttered. ‘Bjarni and Ulf, go you out and see that he does us no hurt. Sing out if he threaten, but beset him no more. But get him gone by all means.’
The two nodded, and took on cloaks with hoods to keep the rain off their heads. They took swords and shields, and stepped out after Hrap. Thorgrim drew the door shut after them and stood back in the hall.
‘Those were no fearful words, Gudruda,’ he said. ‘Olaf can be proud to have such a one for a wife.’
Gudruda nodded; her look still held fast to the door. Light and quick came her breath. ‘You do not deem he will give us trouble, do you?’ she asked.
‘Not this night.’ Thorgrim laughed. ‘Saw you his eyes whenas he left? We should name you Gudruda Hrap-Tamer after this!’
‘Please do not.’ She sighed, and drew her hand across her face. ‘I should never have done this were I not so fretful after Olaf. What can it be that holds him?’
Heavily she turned and went back to her seat. The others drew round her, praising her deed and toasting her with mead. Shortly Bjarni and Ulf came back in: did off their rain-cloaks and went among the rest. Swanhild sat where she had before, and held her gaze down into the fire.
But they had not long to wait. Now from the door sounded a heavy bang, and again it came, like a knocking, and quelled the words of praise. The men rose up, took swords and axes once more in hand: stood to ready. Gudruda looked up with great trouble upon her simple face. Swanhild half-smiled, but not for any cheer. Then the door swung out, and a great bristly shape showed, unformed against the darkness. It stepped across the threshold-stone: then all at once they knew him and raised a shout.
That man was Olaf Sigurdarson.
The godi, the hall’s master, had come back.
Four
HE CAME INTO his home and hung up his cloak on a wall-peg. Behind and around him the door let in a bunch of men, shaggy, rain-wan, their eyes big from the night. Those were the house-carles who had gone with Olaf to the arvel-feast of Njal Thoroldsson at Breidamerk. With them was a stranger: that was a small man, and he took his first chance to break away from those others and chatter his teeth above the fire. But no one looked at him, unless maybe it was the black-haired girl nearby. The others saw only Olaf.
Tall he was, and strongly-made: taller even than Thorgrim; a man just leaving his prime, though of great strength still. His shoes and leggings were strewn with mud, and splatters of mud sprinkled tunic and arms. The folk clustered round him, like children seeking gifts. He nodded, and put one shoulder against a hall-post; and his back was bent, and his eyes lined. Thorgrim offered him drinking-horn, and that Olaf took with a thankful look, and drank slowly down. The voices of the folk rose from a murmuring round him, as he looked down and over them all. At the edge of the crowd stood Gudruda. Shy yet happy she seemed, and she offered no words but those of gentle greeting.
‘Well,’ said Olaf; and at that voice all others stilled. Rough was his voice from the drink and his age. ‘I am come back. Well was it said, ‘Land is good but hearth is better.” ’
‘And the Thoroldsson?’ asked Thorgrim.
‘Be calm, hunt-bear,’ answered Olaf, and smiled wearily. ‘The arvel went well, and afterward, whenas the other guests went homeward, we spoke long, Njal and I: and the word is peace. We have agreed to those same terms I had of his father, that whatever shall come between us, we will meet to agree to atonement between us. Hello, daughter.’
From across the reek of the fire Swanhild raised her witch-eyes, that seemed to see so much and tell so little. ‘Greetings, home-farer.’ He held her gaze, so that after a moment she let her head fall away, and the thick braid stirred and fell.
‘And there is truly peace?’ asked Gudruda.
‘There was no fighting,’ Olaf answered. He sighed, and refilled the horn, but did not leave the doorway, as if loth to take his place anew in the highseat. ‘Nor, wife, is there likely to be in nights to come. I have picked the peace-path.’ Now he came to the fire, and stood over the stranger that sat there.
‘This man I have taken to dwell here among us and teach us: and I would have you treat him with as much honor as you do me. From Irland in the Western Isles he is come: Kjartan is his name, and he is the priest of Christ, and we will take his ways now.’
There fell a silence athwart the hall then. Thorgrim was the first to speak then. ‘Are we to cast aside the old gods?’ he asked.
Olaf looked at him, but said no word.
‘How will you then rule over blood-offering
s, Olaf, as it is your duty as our godi? Who will take in temple-tax and see to the holding of the temple, if you will not? I don’t much like this.’
Gudruda stood still, watching now her husband, now the priest, with speechless wonder: as if she feared to trust the truth of it.
‘There will be no more blood-offerings hereabouts,’ answered Olaf; ‘not if you will follow my lead. And the temple at Hof shall abide no more, but we will build there a church to stand in its stead. And then there will not be that cause of ill-will between us and the men of the Breidamerk, that they have these ways while we cling to the old.’
‘Now might we as well all don gowns!’ Thorgrim cried out woefully.
‘And when was the last time you went a-harrying?’ asked Orvar-Odd. At this Thorgrim waxed angry-red. It was well known he had never been out of sight of Iceland in all his life.
‘Thorgrim—all of you—you are good men, loyal and trustworthy,’ Olaf said, slowly, so that they might all catch and take hold of his words. ‘Yet if I am to be as good a godi as you are thingmen, then I must look ahead and work as I see best. Times change, folk change—only the land does not change. Our ways were good for our grandfathers and we should worship them. Yet think back and ask yourselves, When was there ever a time when we had peace? What has the Raven-Lord to do with peace? What was Thor but a buffoon? We gave them offerings, and got foxish tricks in answer. Odin has no use for peace; but maybe we do.’
At his words they were somewhat stilled, not knowing how to give him answer. He walked through them round the hall: stood before the highseat. They all followed him, muttering among themselves.
‘Now many of you will not abide by this rede,’ Olaf said loudly. ‘To them I say, fine and fare-well! You may choose another chieftain: to him you may give your loyalty. But for the rest of you, them that will honor me as heretofore, know that I will be a Cross-man, even if all men forsake me. And if you will not have it so, then stop me: but else will I sit again in this highseat and be again your godi.’
Then they were still, though some muttered softly, but knew not what word to give aloud. But Thorgrim said, ‘This smells of a woman’s bed-words to me—nor will I be taken for a woman in my ways. And it might still be said that of old, Olaf would not have spoken out the matter so, but would have said, I made up my mind, and so it will be. Those nights are past, it seems. But until the days of choosing come round, you are my godi.’
‘That is well, then,’ said Olaf: and stepped up in the highseat. ‘And will you take the water, and be sworn in Christ?’
Thorgrim looked down and about for a bit. Then he saw Olaf’s daughter where she sat alone by the fire, her head bent low. ‘Not I,’ he said.
‘Yes, you—and you and you and I,’ said Olaf. ‘That, or follow another in the things. This is my will, that all my kin and thralls and men take the water and learn the outland cult. Only then, it seems to me, will men ever have peace in Iceland.’
‘Olaf is right,’ said one of those men that had gone with him. ‘Thorgrim, what is this Odin you give offering to, but a trouble-making, fickle god? My father followed him over the seas, but he never saw the good of it: lost his foot, a hand, and in the end his life. What more has he granted any of you? You all have given many offerings, and our temple is a good one: but still it seems to me is the life hard; and the sheep still die in winter. Do they care for our sheep, or any more for us? That seems bad bargaining to me, that they should take so much and give back so little. I will seek peace with this outland god then, and see what he has to offer me!’
Then there was great clamoring, and some men held to one side and others to the other. Some were for going to take the water that very night; but the rest held back, and said they would never forsake the old gods. In the end Olaf called for peace, and Gudruda and the women went among them, and said the time had come for sleep. And that was the only thing agreed upon that night. The women looked to the men that had come with Olaf, and gave them meat and bread and clean dry linen. One by one the men lay down upon the benches round the long-fire and drew cloaks over them, and in time stillness settled over the hall again.
Then Gudruda went to where Olaf still sat. She came from speaking with the priest, and feeding him.
‘Husband,’ she said, softly and with brimming eyes—‘and is this really so?’
He looked on her, and his head fell a little, so that it was as if he nodded.
‘Husband, this is a fine thing you do. Greater was the bravery to try the other road. Only thus will we have peace. But you sit still in wet and muddy clothes, and are like to catch your death of cold from it. Will you not let me dress you in a goodly new tunic, that I have woven for you since you went to the arvel?’
Olaf lifted up his eyes and looked down on her. ‘No, wife,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow I will put on your new tunic. But for this night, these old clothes are good enough for me. Now go you to bed, and let me sit here in my seat awhiles.’
‘Yes, husband.’ She stepped up beside him, and kissed his brow. Then she went down round the big roof-trees of the highseat and into the shutbed they shared.
Five
THE NIGHT WORE on, still and peaceful in the fire-warm hall. Only seldom would the moan of the wet wind without rise so that it might be heard. The lamps now were all snuffed, and the long hall dark. The ember-pit, four ells wide, fifty long, cast up a darkly-reddish glow upon the stones and the benches filled with sleeping men. At the middle the glow cast up like a sea-wave upon the roof-trees. Only the bottoms of them were in that glow: half-way up their lengths they were lost in the darkness. Between them was the highseat of Hardbein Oxen-Hand: a thing of red and black, carven and big and shadowy.
There sat Olaf, unmoving as stone, seeming larger for the blackness of his smoky shadow grown up behind him. Before him could be seen his shoes and leggings, all crusted over with the mud of that night’s ride: then a blackness, and above that his chest and heavy shoulders, arms and hands, beard and face. In the light his face seemed old, older far than Olaf was. But his great dark eyes cast back none of the ruddy gleamings of the fire below.
At his feet his daughter sat. One arm she had put about her father’s lower legs, and her cheek leaned against the mud-splashed thigh. With the other hand, unrestfully, she stroked and played with the thick black braid curling down around the wanness of her throat.
In his hand Olaf held the ale-horn: but it might have been Mjollnir for all he lifted it. The other hand sat thick as a bear’s paw upon his knee. In the wild tangle of his beard were spots of black: and they were clots of mud, thickening among the crinkled hairs. Sleepily Olaf looked down upon the black crown of his daughter’s hair.
She, as if stirred by that gaze, sat up and set to unbinding the muddy shoes. Those laces had been drawn tight by a man’s strength, and even tighter by mud and fire. She was a long time about it, even with her slender clever fingers.
‘I mind me of that first time you unbound my shoes,’ Olaf murmured. ‘Little were you then; and the knots looked bigger than your fists. How I laughed to see that you could undo them all!’
‘Yes,’ said the girl softly. ‘That was when my mother lived. I had to fight that I might unbind your shoes. Then there were many that wished for that honor.’
With a wrench Olaf lifted up the mead-cup and brought it to his lips. He moved his head, and the shadow grown behind him moved a bit, unclosing more of the carved runes of the seat. Olaf sighed, and shut fast his eyes: took a grip on his daughter’s hair. Slowly he let it slip between his rough horned fingers.
‘So, Swanhild, I have done it. Was it so wrong?’
The girl at his feet did not look up. The last knot pulled free, and she tugged off the shoe: knocked it against stone and set it over beside the other.
‘You are a good godi, father,’ she told the ember. ‘It is not for me to gainsay you. You know more of the world than I. I will not grumble.’
She bent and picked up a shoe again, and set it beside her own stocki
nged foot. ‘When I was a child, and my mother yet lived, then these shoes seemed great to me. The mud on them smelled oddly, of faroff fields. Sometimes there were flowers caught in the lacings: then I knew you had been up in the fells. Sometimes thorns pricked my fingers, and I tried hard not to let you see my tears. But you ever knew.’
‘What,’ he muttered, ‘you do not weep now? But no, you are too proud for that. You are too like your mother, little black swan: long-necked and graceful, but fierce withal. Shy to hand, to fight deadly. You are over-bloodthirsty, Swan: it was your name made you so. Swans are better seen from afar. If you had been born a hundred years ago, then you would have been a great lady like in the tales. Then you would have wed a mighty man, served mead and ale to all his battle-comrades; given birth to sons, decked yourself in gold, and seen wolves glutted on crimson fields…’
‘Yes, you mock me now,’ she said; ‘but earlier it seemed to me you let them argue it out as if you hoped they might shout down these plans of yours, and make you be again that Olaf you once were, in spite of you.’
‘And where then would have been that Olaf I once was?’ he asked, with a weary blitheness.
She was still. Then, very quietly, ‘Father, must it be this way?’
He took her hair and pulled round her head, firmly, gently, so that she must look up at him. ‘Daughter,’ he said to her; then halted. She pulled free her head and sat round with her back against the fire, and her arms curled round her knees. Olaf looked down at her, and saw the red light glinting through the backs of her eyes, so that in the shadow of her face two red slits blazed.
‘Daughter, there was a time when I should never have chosen this path: well you know it. When a man is young, he burns with Odin’s three fires. Poetry, mead, battle… Njal Thoroldsson asked me to give you to him as wife.’
Those red slits grew long. ‘What answer gave you?’
‘I said, that it would be called a good match by many: that his kin are fully the equal of ours, and that Njal himself is known to be a man clever at law and gaining wealth. I said that none would call it aught but gain to both our standings; but that I had vowed you a free hand in it, and must ask you your rede on it.’
‘Why did you not give it to him then, in place of all those words?’
‘Swan, he is a young man yet, and only now feels the highseat of his father. I would not hurt his pride.’
‘But father, weasels have no pride.’
Olaf was still for a moment: then burst out in a laugh, lusty and young. Men turned about and raised their arms where they lay sleeping down the hall. ‘Ah, Swan, thanks… It is long since I have laughed so. How far away seem the days of my youth now! They are laid in howe; and my middle days are far from well. Old Jarl Haakon is dead, and Norway’s King owns Christ for his lord. And I look only for peace in my oldness. What else would you have me do? Let Njal Long-Nose have his way. What care I for temples and wooden gods? We are not changed for that. The goats will still give milk, the winds will blow, and Vatnajokull will flood these dales. Enough, then: I have chosen. Now is that hay cut and stacked.’
The black-haired girl leaned on one arm, her hand flat upon the stones, and looked about the hall. That glow was darkling, and the forms of sleeping men fainter, bigger and more awesome. Half to herself she muttered, ‘I mind me of the tale of how the might of the Ynglings was ended in the Swede-realm. Ingjald the Ill-minded was then king at Uppsala, and his daughter Asa Ill-rede by his side: and twelve kings they slew by treachery and strength, and broadened their realm two-fold in every way. And King Ingjald wived his daughter to Gudrod, king over Skaney; but she set Gudrod to slay his brother, and then brought on Gudrod’s death—so she returned to Uppsala and her father. But then Ivor the Far-reaching, Gudrod’s brother’s son, went into Skaney, and with Odin’s aid raised a host and marched on Uppsala. And all King Ingjald’s men fled. Thereat the king went back into his hall with all his folk; and Asa served all men strong ale, but Ingjald let faggots be laid about the hall. And when the folk were all dead drunk, then the king rose up and laid fire to the hall: he took the highseat, and Asa sat in the guest-seat, and all there were burnt up: and men said that was the costliest funeral-bier…’
To that Olaf had no quick answer. After awhile he spoke lowly and said, ‘That was long ago, daughter: years and years before King Harald Hairfair’s first breath. Do not grieve that those nights are gone.’
‘You have said it, father: this thing is done. But still, in the patterns of these embers, I can see the lines of days to come: things beyond your seeing. And I must say it now for I have no choice: you shall have what you wish, but you will outlive me by many winters; and I will die young.’
Six
THAT NIGHT SWANHILD lay abed in a fine bed-shift Olaf had won years before when he had gone over the seas eastaways. Beneath her the dry straw of the mattress crumpled softly. The curtain of her shutbed was drawn across, so that she was alone. Above the curtain-pole was the faintest glow, shifting and fading, of the embers off the smoke: it made the wooden walls, low-falling roof and curtain seem all the blacker and closer. Of a sudden, up swept Swanhild: put back the curtains all the way open. Then she lay back.
Through the opening gleamed the long red line of the fire and before it the huge black hulk of the highseat. There was a sound from the back of the hall of someone using a pot. Away somewhere else were whispering and rustling: one of the guests had beguiled a serving-girl. The sounds came to an end and there was silence—then they began again. One man groaned, dreaming. Ulf the house-dog padded by to find a spot closer to the fire. The embers of the longfire hissed somewhat when they fell apart.
The sounds crept slyly into the little room. Swanhild’s black eyes glinted with the glow. She put forth her arm as if she would draw the curtain back: then halted. She drew the blankets over her head. She threw them back again. She lay now upon her side, now her back, now the other side, while the hall-noise slowly lapsed. Far away, it seemed, the winds of the storm rose and fell, whispering and groaning through the old turf roof.
Seven
GUDRUDA WOKE ALONE. Her eyes were bright in a twinkling. She got out of bed and dressed herself hurriedly, not bothering to fetch a straw from the longfire to light a lamp. Softly she stepped to the women’s door and slipped out into the frost-edged air.
Still it was, with neither wind nor wet. The garth was yet black with night, but the deep blue sky above was laced with patterns of butter and copper and scarlet. Between them the last dim stars burned weakly. Gudruda could hear the animals shifting in the barn and sty. The air had become colder after the storm. Here and there in the dark ground were glimmers of ice.
Gudruda walked across the yard. Her shoes crunched in the frozen waves of mud. Her breath billowed about her red cheeks in little steamy clouds. She went round the hall, past the dunghill and the sheep-cote, out by the side-gate and up to the crown of the hill. There she was dark against the chalky sky. Behind her, beyond the fells, the light was already glinting from the distant peaks of the glacier. Some terns flew over Gudruda’s head, their little wings forming dark gray crosses in the sky.
At the top, Gudruda breathed heavily. So bright was it here that her features could be made out clearly. Rosy were her cheeks: her hair like fresh-churned butter: her eyes bright as tears. Awkwardly she bent to her knees in the stiff brittle grass. She faced south, down past the sloping fields, across the little bay, over the wide stretch of the blackly sluggish sea. There, like a gleaming, fire-hot-red iron blade unbearable to behold, the Sun burst over the line of the sea. Its fierce rays were like a host of cast spears. The terns were struck into pinkish white, pearly with shell-gleamings; the grass stalks grew so green they looked blue; the wave-tops glittered for a twinkling—and then all the sea fell into light and waxed all at once alive, metal, opaque, fiery, and weird. Away to Gudruda’s right the distant spears fell gleaming upon the pastures of empty Kirkjubaer, where Irish monks had lived and worshiped more than a century earlier
, before the coming of the Easterlings that had slain them: and where no pagan had been able to live since.
For a while Gudruda could not move, awestruck with the holy fairness of the scene. Steam drifted from her nostrils; her shoulders quivered slightly with cold. Then she bowed her head: took the square brass cross in one hand, closed her eyes, and needfully began to pray.
