War of the Gods

by Poul Anderson

  “I had no need to visit him, nor would he have had heed to give me,” answered Ivar. “Tomorrow Ragnhild goes to the giant. Nidaros seethes with the news. It’ll shortly be over the whole kingdom.”

  Hadding nodded. “They’ve had some foreboding of it here at your home,” he said tautly, for he had talked with them.

  “Yes, that happened what I told you could happen, though not quite as ill as it might have been. Chieftains throughout the land called a Thing a short while ago, and yeomen flocked to it. They decided that unless the king gave her up, they would overthrow him and take her there themselves. Anything to make an end of their woe. Some said this would be not only a lawless deed but a luckless one, for the woman would kill herself first, or ask her father to slay her. But others cried that then at least they two would die, whose selfishness had brought on so much death and ruin. They were on hand, though they kept aside and silent.

  “Yesterday the meeting passed its award. Then Ragnhild trod before it. No man should call her coward, she told them. She would go, but only if they swore a renewed troth to King Haakon. They shouted it forth. I hear that some wept.”

  “She has a bold soul,” said Hadding. “I feared we’d be too late to do more than avenge her. Noir I see she’s worth avenging, or, better, saving.”

  “What if the matter had still been moot?” Ivar asked.

  “Why, we’ve spoken about that, you and I. I’d have tracked the giant down. But it could have been a wearisome task. Instead, he’ll come to me.”

  Ivar gave Hadding a long look. “I wonder if this is altogether happenstance,” he murmured. “From all I’ve heard, your weird is unlike other men’s.”

  The Dane-king shrugged. “I know not what it is, any more than you know yours. Let’s get to work. I must start off betimes.”

  They had in truth talked when their crews camped ashore along the way. Best would be for Hadding to arrive unbeknownst. His undertaking was wildly risky even without Jarnskegg being somehow forewarned. His men would take the longship to the lonely little Tarva islands and bide, except for a few who would go with him. They had come close to blows over who those should be. When he picked them he must take utmost care not to make the rest think that in his eyes they were less doughty. One man of Ivar’s who was willing would guide them, Thorfinn Thorgeirsson. He hailed from Dofra Fell and knew the Troll’s Hood.

  Jarnskegg had long since blared his terms of peace. On that bare height, from which he could scan far and wide, he had heaped wood for a huge and smoky fire. Let a man set it alight. Let Ragnhild wait there by herself, or at most with a serving maid or two. Belike he would see the beacon. If he was off waging his war, he would get the news otherwise and hasten to her.

  There was no hope of sending a host to kill him as he drew nigh. Nowhere for miles around could it lie hidden. Jarnskegg was a hunter, with all a hunter’s wariness.

  Hadding too was a hunter.

  He left with his small following as soon as they had packed food and gear. The horses were rather stiff after their time in the knorr, but quickly grew limber. They were the best from his stable at the Soundside hall. He rode them the hardest they could bear, changing gait or halting no oftener than was unforgoable. In the short, wan summer night his band would stop to eat, roll up in their saddle blankets, and sleep. Sunrise found them already again on the road.

  At first the way was easy and quick, south down the broad green dale, among ripening grainfields and meadows full of grazing livestock, past farmsteads and hamlets where folk dropped their work to stare at these warriors hurrying by. Then the land began to climb, steeper and steeper. Woods became mostly birch, with settlement sparse. The riders passed clearings where stood oily charred wreckage and bones lay strewn in the grass.

  Thorfinn led them onto a narrow track that twisted off westward and upward. The woods thinned out until they fated amidst tussocks, bearberry, moss, and lichen. Streamlets clinked through wastes of scree. Wind whittered chill. Blue-gray bulks, streaked with snow, shouldered into heaven. Soon there was no more trail. Thorfinn took his bearings from the peaks he saw.

  At the end of four days and nights, he raised an arm and drew rein. “I think this is as far as the others had better go,” he told Hadding. “If they stay in yonder cleft, fireless, they should be unseen. You and I have about half a day ahead of us on foot.”

  “I like this not,” growled Gunnar, “cowering like a marmot while my lord fares to battle.”

  “You knew beforehand you must wait,” Hadding answered, “and I know that can be the hardest of tasks.”

  “If you fall, no housecarle of yours will rest till we’ve avenged you.”

  “Well, some should go home to help the next king of Denmark. They’ll find fighting aplenty. But settle that among yourselves. Now let me rest.”

  Hadding lay down and slept. His men kept wakeful, holding a stockade of spears around him.

  At dawn he and Thorfinn left them. The Norseman was a good waymate, big, a full ruddy beard reaching nearly to his broad chest, withal long-legged and nimble as a goat.

  The faring was harder yet, but they reached the Troll’s Hood a little before noon. The peak reared stark, overlooking crags, cliffs, ridges, rock-strewn slopes, stretches of ice, and snow, all lifeless but for mottling lichen, moss in clumps where stones gave shelter, starveling grass tufts here and there. Nowhere was it flat, though the top was broad enough to hold a few great boulders. Today it also held a mound of split wood, higher than a man’s head. Wind went bleak through an empty heaven. The men felt short of breath.

  “I see why the thurs chose this for the tryst,” Hadding said. “Not only could no troop catch him unawares, they’d lack footing and room to fight.”

  “How then shall one man?” wondered ‘Thorfinn.

  “We’ve been over that. Let’s make my lair.”

  They had thought about this, using Thorfinn’s memories of the two or three times he had come here. That was years ago, he a boy, his father a hunter and trapper. The search for wild reindeer, wolverine, fox, and birds often took them from one ground to another across these heights. Then it was a mettlesome thing for him to scamper off and scramble onto the Troll’s Hood. It showed him fearless of the beings said to haunt it. Something like that stayed in one’s head.

  Two outsize boulders leaned against one another at the rim of a downslope. Only a crack was between them where they faced the peak, while behind lay a kind of three-cornered room some four feet long, with a three-foot opening onto the mountainside. A man could sit there hidden, unless his foe climbed up from straight beneath, and scree would hinder that.

  Hadding and Thorfinn set about making it a little better. The king might have to lurk a while. They took lengths of wood from the heap and wedged them overhead where they wouldn’t show. To this they tied a leather cloak for a roof of sorts. A second such cloak covered the damp stones below. The men chinked the inward opening with pebbles and bits of turf, taking care that it was nothing anybody would likely mark, lest a straight-on glance or a stray sun-flash off iron give Hadding away. They brought in a skin of water, dry food, and blankets they had carried hither.

  As they worked, they spied a stirring and a gleam afar, winding over the high waste from the north. Soon Hadding’s keen eyes told him it was half a dozen folk. “We’re none too early,” he said. Thorfinn had taken a roundabout way through the mountains, not to leave spoor for others to see. “Make haste, and keep clear of the skyline.” His hopes hung on utter surprise.

  They ended their task in time. “Begone,” Hadding bade. “Thank you. You shall have the honors you’ve earned.”

  “More honor would be for me to fight beside you,” the Norseman said.

  Hadding sighed. “This too we’ve been over and over. No more than one man can crouch here, nor does any man but me know what to do. Get well away. You can find a cranny for yourself within earshot, if not sight.” He grinned. “Earshot will be a goodly walk! Afterward I’ll want your help. Or, i
f I fall, your service will be to tell that I fought the fight I said I would.”

  Softly Thorfinn voiced the words of old.

  Kine die, kinfolk die,

  And so at last oneself.

  This I know that never dies:

  How dead men’s deeds are deemed.

  “True,” said Hadding. “You’ll see to that, good friend. Now farewell for a time.”

  Thorfinn gulped. “Fare you ever well, lord.” He turned and went downhill fast, on the slope away from the oncoming band.

  Hadding had already donned his byrnie and whatever else belonged with it, except for the helmet. He crept around the boulders into the room, wrapped blankets about himself against the cold, and squatted in shadow. It was almost like one of those stone chambers said to have been built by giants in the morning of the world. Folk shunned them. Nothing haunted this one but his thudding heart.

  After a while the newcomers climbed into his sight. They seemed to be all men, most of them heavily laden. Then as Hadding peered he saw among them, dressed like them, surely Ragnhild Haakonsdottir. Skirts were ill suited for this last part of the upland trek, where even the hardy little Northland horses could not go. Her long, coppery-red hair was braided and coiled on a head borne high. Wind flapped her cloak back to show, in spite of the thick garments beneath, that she was tall and shapely.

  Hadding could not make out their words. He watched a graybeard warrior speak what must be a last plea, and her naysay it. Slowly, as if the burden were still on their shoulders, the men set up a leather tent. They stocked it with food, drink, blankets, clothes, a stool, and a spear. “No use to her as a weapon,” Hadding muttered, “but maybe of help to her soul.”

  The woman’s hand chopped downward. A man dragged a fire drill, with block and tinder, from his pack. Hunkered before the balewood, he got it kindled. She walked off and stood looking northward over the mountains.

  Flames hatched. They fledged. Great wings of fire beat red and yellow. Sparks streamed. Air roared. Smoke stormed upward and upward. The westering sun touched it with gold.

  The men gathered before Ragnhild. The oldest drew sword and raised it. The others did likewise with whatever arms they bore. The noise of the fire drowned out any speech, but it looked to Hadding as though they said nothing, their throats being too full. They lowered their iron, turned about, and left her standing there.

  Hadding waited.

  The fire whirled higher and hotter. Ragnhild began to walk around and around it. This brought her close to him as she passed by. He saw that she was fair of hue, with gray eyes, curved nose, firmly held lips, strong chin. Though now and then her fists clenched, she strode unfaltering.

  The sun went below the heights. Shadow swept over vastness and pooled in the deeps. The fire guttered low, but must still gleam like a red star across many miles. Wind died away. Air grew swiftly colder. Ragnhild went into her tent. Hadding waited. He kept tautening and loosening his thews, shifting from ham to ham, making any movement he could where he was. Ill would it be if his body stiffened.

  A few stars blinked forth, but the sky was blue gray and only the lightest of twilights dwelt below. One could see nearly as far as by day, though clefts and gorges were darkened, cliffs and peaks dim above them. The dying fire growled, spat, hissed.

  Ragnhild came back out of the tent. She had not undressed. She stood again with fists knotted, tight and aquiver as a struck harpstring, to stare eastward.

  Hadding amidst his boulders heard the noise shortly afterward. Rocks rattled. They slipped aside and downward. Small landslides made a racket like dry waterfalls.

  Footsteps sounded, stone-heavy, ever nearer. Breath went stormwind-loud.

  Jarnskegg climbed onto the Troll’s Hood.

  Taller than three men he loomed, broader and thicker than that, a hill murky against heaven. Skins wrapped bearlike hairiness, with a sharp stench. His mane and beard bristled stiff, rusty black, around shelving brows, pocked lump of a nose, mouthful of greenish snags. In his right hand he bore a club, and tucked under his thong-belt was a sax, both made to his bigness.

  He stopped and stood agape. Ragnhild held fast, looking up toward eyes hidden in their bony caves.

  “Ha!” Jarnskegg’s voice grated thunderous. “It is you, then, come to your lover.”

  Only the embers answered, sparks snapping from their white heart.

  The jotun’s left hand reached downward. It shook. Nor were his words altogether steady. “We will be happy, you and I. We both belong in the uplands. I will show you wonderful things. I will stamp on your foes. You shall be queen with me, Ragnhild.”

  Hadding slipped a coif onto his head. Above it he set and fastened his helmet. It was of the closed kind, hiding his face behind an iron plate graven with a wolf’s mask. He would need every warding he could have. Shield in hand, he writhed out of the room and around it to the open. Drawing sword, he ran at the giant.,

  “Faithlessness!” Jarnskegg screamed, as the earth itself might scream.

  “No doing of hers!” Hadding shouted. “Get aside, woman!”

  The thurs swung his club on high and back down. Hadding slacked the tightness in his left leg. The right pushed him barely fast enough. The club crashed on stones. Flinders flew. Hadding hewed at the arm behind. The iron bit. Blood welled from a gash, more black than red in this dusk.

  Jarnskegg howled and swung anew. Again Hadding slipped free, though by inches. He had long since taught himself how to make the lesser use of his lame right foot, but was not as swift as once he had been.

  He sprang close in against a calf whose knee was not much below his eyes. He slashed. Jarnskegg stooped. His left hand snatched. Hadding bounced back from it. His sword sliced across the fingers.

  He knew of giants that their sheer weight made them slower than men. Most humans knew it not. They had naught to do with such beings. They had heard, or seen, how fast a giant walked. They seldom stopped to think that that was be. cause the stride was long, not quick.

  Back and forth the battle went. Ragnhild stood offside as far as she could get without fleeing. Her eyes were wide, her fists held above a bosom that rose and fell.

  Hadding ducked and wove, shifted and leaped. When he saw an opening he sprang in and cut. At once he bolted cleat If that club smote, he would die.

  Bellowing his wrath, again and again Jarnskegg swung. The fight surged near the low-burnt fire. Hadding skittered along its edge. The heat from the coals laved him.

  Suddenly he yelled in the Old Tongue that he had heard when he was a boy, “Maggot from Ymir’s rotten flesh, Hel herself shall spurn you!”

  Never had the jotun thought to hear from a man words out of Jotunheim. Astounded as much as enraged, he blundered forward, brought down his weapon, and shrieked. Sparks and a last few reborn flames sheeted high. He had stepped in the coalbed. His boot smoked. The bare calf above it seared. The club fell from his grasp. As he lurched back, Hadding lunged after him and struck once more at the other ankle.

  Half witless with pain, Jarnskegg nonetheless drew his sax. The crooked blade whistled. It caught Hadding’s shield and clove half through. Numbed, the king’s fingers lost the handgrip. What was left of the shield thudded to earth.

  Jarnskegg came after him. The sax was harder to dodge than the club. Iron met iron. Clumsy though the giant now was, he knocked Hadding’s blade aside and nearly tore it loose from the man’s hand. Jarnskegg’s blow kept going. It laid Hadding’s own right calf open to the bone.

  Before he could lose much blood, the man darted forward ward. He slipped under Jarnskegg’s wobbly guard and hewed yet again at the blistering right ankle. Already he had cut through boot and flesh. Now the tendon gave way. Jarnskegg tottered and toppled. As he did, he struck out with his fist. It caught Hadding on his shieldless left side. The warrior soared before it and landed on the stones. Ragnhild wailed, less for fear than wrath.

  Jarnskegg had dropped his sword. Earth shook when his weight came down. Snarling, he rolled ove
r, laid hands on ground, pushed himself up-On his knees he rocked to make an end of Hadding.

  The Man rose too. Blood flowed freely from the hurt leg. It made dark spots on torn cloth where the fall had sanded skin off him. He limped straight at the thurs. A hand reached for him. His blade sang. It ripped a gash in the arm from wrist halfway to elbow. Blood poured out. Jarnskegg stared at the flow. That gave time for Hadding to draw nearer. He stepped onto a hairy thigh. Sword hewed at throat. He fell off. The blood of his foe gushed over him.

  He had not reached ground when Jarnskegg’s hale arm batted. Again Hadding pitched through the air, to crash yards away. There he lay still.

  Jarnskegg crumpled. He gasped, horrible hollow wheezes, while the life ran out of him.

  Over the wet stones sped Ragnhild. The jotun’s eyes tracked her until they rolled back and dimmed. The whole great body went slack. The death-stench rolled forth, chokingly strong.

  Ragnhild heeded it not. She knelt by her champion. He breathed. She bent to peer closely through the twilight at the wound in his leg. It was grave but should not be deadly if the bleeding could soon be stopped. For a flicker of time she gazed at the mask of his helmet. Then she threw off her cloak and tunic. She unlaced the shirt beneath and pulled it over her head. With her sheath knife she slashed strips of the fine linen. She hauled the breeks leg up to his knee and began to bind the calf.

  Gravel scrunched. She lifted her face. A stranger had come. Big and shaggy, he stared at her. She scrambled back. Her arms crossed over her bare breasts. “Who are you?” she breathed.

  “I followed here,” said Thorfinn, pointing at Hadding. “He sent me off to wait, but when I heard the fight I could not stay. I see he did what he came to do.” He squatted down. “And he lives. You’re doing well by him, my lady. Finish the task.”

  Ragnhild gave herself again to it. Thorfinn watched for a little, then went over to squint at the fallen giant. “Yes, lord, your name will be undying,” he said.

  “Who is he?” asked Ragnhild. “Who are you?”