The new thralls from Angle-land brought change with them. More land could now be put to the plough, and the three male thralls, along with Yrling and Ful, cleared the stand of linden and oak trees beyond the barley field. The trees were felled by axe, dragged free by oxen teams, the stumps burnt out by fire. Sidroc and Toki chopped endless boughs and branches, stacking them to dry for future kindling. The boys cared also for the sheep and cattle, milking the cows each day, and leading both sheep and cattle to fresh pastures. Hlaupari proved his worth in these tasks, nipping at the hocks of dawdling cattle, but needing only to fix his eye upon the ewes to make them move. The hound was now as old as Sidroc, and the fur on his muzzle had whitened, but though he moved more slowly, he had not lost his love of running which had given him his name.
The two women thralls from Angle-land cooked and scrubbed and swept, tended to the pigs and fowl, worked the vegetable plots, and spun thread from wool roving every free moment. Signe could still stand at her loom and weave, but in truth all three women were hard pressed to feed and clothe five men and two boys, and themselves as well.
Something else was demanded of one of the slave women, which Sidroc witnessed one day after the grain harvest.
It was early evening, his chores mostly done, the meal yet to be ladled up. He and Toki had walked down to a runnel of water beyond the cattle pasture. Snakes and frogs hid in the tall grasses there, and the sides of the water course were steep enough, and narrow enough, that the boys could test themselves, leaping from bank to bank. Hlaupari splashed through the water, snapping at rising dragonflies that dipped above the wider portions of it, and nosing in the wet growth after a fat toad. After a while Toki tired of this. He could never stay long at any activity, even one as satisfying to Sidroc as wandering by the narrow stream, and he headed back.
Hlaupari had run upstream, chasing after a water duck, and Sidroc would stay on. He had little time to be alone, and welcomed his brief ramblings with his dog. Soon he too would have to turn back, for the evening milking. He stood on the bank of the runnel, and his hand went, as it often did, to the knife at his waist. It and the dog were the only things remaining from his life with his father. There was not even a burial mound to visit, back at his father’s farm. Sidroc had never known either grandmother nor grandsire, but his father had often taken him to their mounds.
Where his own father rested none could know; the sea-God Njord’s underwater realm was vast. He looked up the narrow banks of the runnel; it was far too shallow for even the smallest boat, but still it brought to mind the swift moving stream his father used to reach the sea. Sidroc found himself staring into the depths of the dark-glinting water.
Water had taken his father away, and had almost taken his own life. Yet the strongest and best memories of his father were founded in and around water. At this point in his life he knew he might never see his father again. If any spoke of him, it was as one dead. Sidroc could not quite consider him thus. But the days spent with him were a long way away, and growing further off. He felt the guardian spirit he shared with his father, their fylgja, should be stronger than ever, and wondered if it were because he was bigger now himself, or if it was because she had quit his father at his death. Surely his father’s luck-spirit, his hamingja, had run out on him, if he had died…
Hlaupari came back now, and threw himself in the long grass, panting. Sidroc let him rest a moment, then whistled. With the Sun lowering in the sky, boy and dog made their way back to the farm.
He was nearing the furthest out building when he heard a sound, a sort of gasping grunt. There, near gathered shocks of drying rye, he saw a moving form. It was his uncle Yrling, lying on the ground, his brown tunic on his back, boots on, his leggings pulled down to the backs of his thighs. Beneath his body lay one of the thrall women, facing up, her gown bunched around her chest, her eyes open, staring straight up into the dying light of day.
Sidroc had his hand on Hlaupari’s neck, and his fingers now curled in the beast’s fur. He felt riveted where he stood, watching Yrling move above the woman. The dog stilled under his grasp. The woman, whose name was Berthe, now tilted her chin slightly. Her eyes found Sidroc’s, saw him staring at her and what was happening to her. He watched her eyes squeeze shut, her face return to the dimming sky.
He pulled himself and his dog away.
Sidroc had many times seen rams covering ewes, and cocks mounting hens as they fluttered beneath them. He had been there when a neighbouring farmer had brought his good bull to Ful’s farm, and watched the huge animal rise up on his hind legs behind a young and spotted heifer, that it might bear a calf, and keep them in milk. But this, he had not seen.
He slipped into the barn, expecting to find Toki there; both cows were waiting. One had been milked, but Toki had left the basin behind, for Sidroc to carry to the spring house. For once he was glad Toki had done so. He did not want to see Toki now, nor anyone.
He stood alone in the dimness of the place. Hlaupari curled up in the straw. The unmilked cow lowed at him, but he did not move towards her. He stood, aware of the quickness of his breath and the beating of his heart, until he heard the sound of footfall on the dusty ground outside the open doors. He glimpsed Yrling, passing by, on the way to the house. Then Sidroc stepped out.
He rounded the corner to see the thrall-woman Berthe still there by the drying shocks of rye. She was kneeling on the ground, her gown now pooled around her.
He stood behind and to one side of her, making no sound, regarding her, knees in the dust. She had bowed her head. He watched her hand rising before her face, her fingers touching her brow, dropping to her belly, crossing to touch both shoulders, and joining together, palms pressing, before her. He thought her lips were moving but was not sure.
He drew nearer, and she started, but did not rise. More than a moment passed before she spoke.
“Do you too demand my body?” she asked, so softly that he must draw nearer.
Her tone was flat, and her Norse not yet easy to understand. She looked at him more closely, and as if for the first time. “You are too young.”
He only swallowed, and asked something in return.
“What were you doing with your hands?”
She paused before she told him. “Trying to bless myself. Praying to Our Father.” She stood at this.
“To All-Father?” He had never seen anyone make those hand movements while offering to Odin.
She shook her head. “To the True God, the Father of Christ.”
Sidroc had never heard of this God.
“Does he hear you?”
“He hears everything. And even if my prayer is not granted while I still live, he will free me.”
“My Uncle Yrling can free you, he alone,” Sidroc offered. “Or if you gain silver, you can buy your freedom.” He had heard of some thralls doing just that.
She almost smiled at this, but Sidroc already knew a smile rooted in bitterness. “The man who calls himself my master is more slave than I,” she said.
He did not know what to say to this, and so said nothing. His hair had grown long, to his shoulders, and he ran the fingers of his right hand through it now, thinking on this.
“You…you will bear a babe now,” he found himself saying. When animals mated, the females bore young.
“I will never bear the child of that man, or of any like him,” she answered. Her eyes had flared as she said this. “Every touch is hateful to me.”
This last meant something. He had many times recoiled at Ingirith’s touch, her hand pinching, slapping, wielding the forked beating stick. He had been birched by Ful since then, but it did not seem as bad as what Ingirith had done to him.
He kept looking at her. The other thrall-woman was squat; Berthe was slender. He saw what he had not seen before, that she wore something small and black about her neck, strung on a thin leathern cord. It looked a key.
“What is that key you wear,” he wanted to know. Thralls owned little
or no real goods, and so had nothing to secure in chests.
Her fingers rose to it, and she lifted it in her hand. He took a step forward.
“A key, one I cut of leather.”
He cocked his head at hearing this. Such a key was useless; it could turn nothing.
Her jaw moved slightly as she shook her head. “To remind me of Sainted Peter, and the keys he holds, to Heaven.”
Another one of her Gods, Sidroc thought.
Berthe brushed her left eye with her knuckle. More than one tear glimmered there. She looked ready to go, and glanced beyond him. “I must go back to the kitchen yard,” she told him, and left.
He watched her as she did. All worked hard on the farm, the thralls hardest of all. He saw now that Yrling had called her away from her rightful work of their supper, called her away to make her lie down beneath him, something she did not want to do. Thralls had no right to refuse anything, he knew this.
He went back to the barn to milk the waiting cow, thinking on what he had seen, and even more on what he had heard. When he sat down at table that night Berthe came up and ladled out food for all of them, not looking at Yrling, and him ignoring her, just as if nothing had happened.
Once he came upon Ful using Berthe in just the same way, and in almost the same place, sheltered from view of the house and kitchen yard. As Sidroc slowed to watch, Yrling came up behind him and shooed him away, and then himself left. But later both he and Toki heard the words, low and angry, Yrling exchanged with Ful over the episode.
“She is my thrall,” Yrling said.
“Not wholly. Who gave you the silver to go to Angle-land? Part of her is mine. The part I had today.”
The day after this Yrling and his two nephews were at work building up the store of firewood for the kitchen yard. Berthe and the second thrall-woman, whose name was Ebbe, were boiling water in the largest iron cauldron, ready to dye newly woven lengths of wool. It was hot and heavy work, stirring and tending the steaming fabric, and the time needed allowed just one colour per day. This morning they shook the bright yellow flowers and dried leaves of weld into the pot, then set the colour with the juice of crushed crab-apples, so that the woolens they dipped would not fade.
It took a good deal of fire to dye either wool or linen, but firewood and charcoal both were used in great quantities year round at the farm. Yrling was splitting lengths of seasoned wood, part of which was taken by the thrall-women and fed right into the cooking ring. The two boys were at the smaller chopping blocks splitting some of what Yrling had hewn into piles of kindling, and stacking it.
The oats, barley, and rye had been sown, and all the vegetables were in. Mid-Summer was a full Moon away, and Yrling was soon to leave, heading off to Angle-land again. It would be his second trip there, one which he hoped would prove even more profitable than the first, when he had returned with a purse lumpy with silver and the four thralls.
When he had come home with such treasure he had been asked more than once by the boys to relate how he had gained it all. Yrling was a Winter’s child, and had seen eighteen of them now, but in the eyes of the boys he was a man, and a rich one, too. He had the horse he had owned since he was fifteen, the bag of new silver which he had shown them with pride, and the thralls. These had produced enough that Yrling need take no silver either from his own store or from Ful to underwrite his next voyage. The excess grain grown under the thralls’ labour was sold in Ribe and Yrling could pay his own way to the ship owner on this coming trip. Beyond the riches he had brought back was the tale of the adventure itself, and the fact that he killed men to win it.
When Ful had gone raiding that single time, he had killed no man. It had been enough to appear with his fellow adventurers, brandishing spears before the frightened crofters whose hut they stormed. One or two folk had been hurt, but none killed; the threat of their spear points was enough. Binding their wrists and forcing them to hurry to their waiting ship was all it had taken.
Yrling and his fellows had harder work of it, or being all young, made it the harder. They struck at a hamlet of some four farms, thinking to gain enough in slaves, grain, and livestock to enrich all eight of them at once. It was dusk, the folk all within, and fire was flung on the thatched roofs, to drive those inside to flee for their lives. It would be a simple task, they thought, to surround those who came running out, forcing their surrender. It was not.
Before the first torch was lobbed a dog began to bark, then came running at them. They killed it, only to find folk flinging open their doors at the hound’s death-cry. Some who came were men with spears in hand, ready to use them. Shouts and oaths filled the air. Others of the folk began throwing water on their smoking roofs, or attacked the invaders with any tool at hand.
Yrling saw one of his fellows crumple and fall under a blow to the head delivered with a spade. Armed with his spear he was surrounded by a foreign folk, men and women both, defending their lives and property, fighting for their kith and kine. He and his fellows won out, but not before he had run his spear into the belly of one man and the back of another.
The fact that he had killed two men distinguished their uncle to the boys, far more than the fact that he was three years shy of twenty when he had done so. They knew King Horik’s men killed; not only those threatening his borders but those who would not pay their taxes. But those were trained warriors. They wore tunics of linked iron rings, iron helmets, and bore not only spears and knives, but costly pattern-welded swords at their sides, swords whose blades had been hammered and twisted of many plates of blue steel in far-off Frankland. Yrling had only his knife and his spear, and had joined a warrior’s rank with that.
When his uncle had first told his tale, the thing that most struck Sidroc was the killing of the dog. A good watch dog was useful on any farm. The fact that the beast had been killed doing his job gave Sidroc pause. It might have been Hlaupari. He thought about the dog, and asked his uncle more than once about him, so that Yrling was short with him. It was just a common hound, one he did not kill, but another of his number; and its death by a spear-thrust had been quick. But Sidroc did not forget that the first to die had been a dog. He wondered what he would do if someone appeared and killed his own.
The three had stopped to take a break in their labours, and Yrling had drawn up a full bucket of water from the well, that they might drink and splash their heated faces. The water was cold, as well water ever is, and more than welcome. Yrling sat down on the ash stump that served as chopping block, and the boys took their seats on a round of the same trunk, upon which they had been splitting kindling.
A young rooster was strutting near the fowl house. It put Sidroc in mind of something.
“Will you make sacrifice to Thor, or to Odin, before you go?” he asked his uncle.
Toki had an answer readily enough. “Thor! Thor!” he urged.
Yrling laughed. He then looked at Sidroc. “Who do you think I should send a cock to?” His voice was not teasing, but serious as he asked his nephew his opinion.
Sidroc considered. “You Offered to Thor last year, and he profited you. But I think now, having proved yourself, you should make offering to Odin himself, so that he begins to see you.”
“Ha!” returned Yrling, nodding his approval. “I think so too. Thor grants strength. But I need strength, and craft as well to win what I seek. For that I need Odin, the God of thought. It is time that All-Father takes note of me.”
From the way Yrling looked at him Sidroc knew that his uncle was pleased, and a bit surprised. Sidroc now said something more, to explain how he knew what Yrling’s choice would be.
“We share the same fylgja,” he offered.
Yrling’s lip twisted at this. Sidroc knew that such things were not often discussed in Ful’s household.
Yrling had been little more than a toddling child when his father Hroft had died, but still retained warm memory of his mother Ashild. Perhaps once or twice Yrling’s older brother Hrald had me
ntioned their inner life; Hrald who had promised to bring him home and never had. He did not like to think of his older brother. And now, of this shared spirit of which Sidroc spoke, he was not so certain.
“It is my hamingja I am more concerned with, my luck-spirit,” Yrling countered. “Skill only gets you so far. You must have luck too.”
“I will have both,” Toki claimed.
“You will have neither, if you do not learn to work hard.”
“Why work when you can take, as you took the thralls, and the silver you brought home.”
“And you think that was not work? Coming alive to Angle-land was work enough, with the North Sea crossing. Then to land and find food, and scout out crofts to target. After this, the attack itself, where you have one chance to surprise and overpower the men of the place. More than once we tried a farm where many men appeared from work-yards or fields, and saw our backs and not our weapons.”
Both boys always listened with rapt attention whenever Yrling spoke of his time in Angle-land. This they had not heard.
“You ran?” This was Toki, always blunt.
“Only a fool never runs.” Yrling wagged his head at the yellow-haired boy. “That is why you would not live long, if you took to raiding.”
This stilled Toki, but only briefly. They went back to work, and at the first blow from Yrling’s broad-headed axe, Toki jested it was the head of a Saxon warrior.
Yrling stopped and looked at both boys. Eager as Yrling was for riches and a measure of renown, he would not bask in fame he had not yet earned.
“I have faced no warriors yet, just farmers, much like us,” he corrected. “Some of them were good spears-men.” A slight pause, as he remembered his time there. “Not as good as me.”
“You will teach us spear-work soon,” Sidroc asked.
“Já.” His uncle was looking at him, the bright and hawk-like eyes fastened upon him. “You will come with me.”
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