Oddi had heard the same discourse Sidroc had, and need not be told on which side Ful and Yrling would fall. He seemed instead to ask Sidroc what he wanted. The boy saw this, and it made him pause before he posed a question of his own.
“Would you choose the man,” Sidroc asked. Oddi had lived a long time and under several Kings.
Oddi gave a rueful laugh before he answered. “I would choose no King at all, but if there must be one, better he be strong than weak.” Oddi glanced up at the backs of Ful and Yrling, who stood in front of them. He gave Sidroc his answer. “I would add my voice.”
Sidroc nodded; Oddi would stand with his uncle and with Ful and call out his affirmation.
But Oddi’s words struck Sidroc. No King at all – how could that be, how could any folk live and prosper without a warrior-King to defend and extend their lands? Then he recalled his father telling him of an island, both rich and King-less: Gotland. He gave his head a single shake. Such a land was as remote and distant as his father himself. He did not question Oddi about his words, but did not forget about the idea of such a place, either.
They arrived back at the farm to ill tidings, though Hlaupari barked his usual welcome. Ful and Yrling were still upon their horses, and Sidroc and Yrling walking with Oddi at the head of the oxen. Sidroc had bent to rub his dog’s head when the door to the house opened.
Signe came hobbling out from the dim interior, supported on the arm of Ebbe. The thrall-woman’s nose and eyes were running from her tears, and Signe’s eyes too were wet. She looked up at the men on their mounts.
“Berthe is dying,” Signe told them. Despite her weeping her voice was clear and strong. “Bleeding to death, and it cannot be staunched.”
She stared at the men as they swung down from their mounts. Oddi came up to take the horses, his face downcast.
Sidroc and Toki hung back behind Ful and Yrling. Women had mysterious problems and did bleed, they knew.
Signe was speaking again, looking at Ful and Yrling. “She was gotten with child, which she tried to rid with potion of houseleek. But she could not expel the unborn babe, and it has festered within her.”
The two boys saw Yrling turn and look at Ful.
“I gave her henbane seeds to ease her pain,” Signe went on, “but we can do no more for her.”
The men still did not speak. Signe, feeble as she was in body, straightened herself on Ebbe’s arm. “She will not name the father. And I can guess why.”
Signe was moving back to the door of the house, drawing the men with her, not only with a movement of her arm, but with her eyes. Sidroc and Toki found themselves drawn in their wake. They all approached the alcove near the kitchen yard door in which Berthe slept. The curtains were open. There was an awful smell about the dying woman, which hit them in a wave as they neared. Balled up lengths of linen lay on the floor about her, stained dark with blood.
Berthe lay on her box-bed, glassy-eyed before them. Signe stopped at her head and turned to the men, confronting them with the truth of what was before them.
Sidroc felt Toki turn away. But he himself continued to look at the dying woman. A light blanket covered her, almost to her throat. She lay on her back, her face ashen, her yellow hair sticking to her damp brow. Her eyes were open, but seemed sightless. To Sidroc it was reminder of how she looked, staring straight up and unblinking into the sky when he had seen her motionless under Yrling.
Signe stared at them. “Look what you have done,” she challenged. It seemed meant for all of them, even the boys.
Sidroc recalled that three or four times in the past Berthe had been sick for several days. After this she had looked wan, but continued with her work. Now he understood more. Perhaps those times she was ridding herself of an unwanted child through the use of herbs.
Signe’s next words to the two men confirmed this. “She has rid herself of so many of your babes. This time, it killed her.”
The men were still speechless. Both of them were shaking their heads, a slight motion which Sidroc could not read. He looked again at Berthe lying under her blanket. She seemed to have one hand drawn over her chest. He wondered if clasped in that hand was the small leathern key she always wore.
A few days after Berthe had been buried Sidroc and Toki were in the barn at the milking. Neither boy had spoken about the dead woman, but her death and the manner of it had cast a pall upon the farm. Now Hlaupari, who had followed them in and curled up in his accustomed spot in the straw, began to whine. Sidroc turned his head against the cow’s flank to look at him. It was happening again. Another fit.
For the past few months the hound had been taken by sudden fits of trembling. He would fall to the ground, legs rigid but thrashing, eyes rolled up, mouth open, tongue lolling. They began as this had, with a simple whine, but deepened to violent tremors. Afterwards he would lie exhausted and panting, unable to rise. Sidroc would wait until the hound’s breathing steadied, then hoist him to his feet. Sometimes he fell back again, but more often than not he was able to walk, straight-leggedly at first, but then more normally. The big plumed tail never failed to thump against Sidroc’s legs.
Sidroc finished with the cow and drove her with a hand on her rump back out through the barn opening. He squatted down by Hlaupari’s side. He had learnt not to try to touch him when the fit was fully upon him; a number of small scars on his right hand attested to this. He could do nothing but watch, and murmur to the beast.
“You should kill him, end his suffering,” Toki told him. He had finished with his own cow and come round to stand over Sidroc and his hound.
Sidroc winced to hear it, but it was what Ful and Yrling and even Signe had suggested was best. The dog was old, and his fits coming more frequently.
Sidroc looked up at Toki. The two of them had ranged through fields and marsh with Hlaupari. The hound had flushed brent geese from reeds in shallow water so the boys might let fly their arrows and try to down them. If they hit their mark, Hlaupari splashed joyfully through the waters to claim the prize, trotting back to them, head held high, with an arrowed goose in his clenched jaws. They had netted birds with the dog too, used fowler’s nets propped up on tall stakes and yanked on the pull cords when Hlaupari had driven curlews into it. More than once the hound himself got netted, which always made Sidroc laugh.
The dog had been his father’s, before ever it had been his. When his father had taken the boat to go fishing that final time, he and Hlaupari had waited up for him, and kept on waiting, both at the farm and on the stream bank.
Sidroc looked back at his hound, the muzzle whitened with years. The fit was lasting longer than any before. The spittle falling from the bluish tongue was thick, almost like sea foam. The noise from the throat was a whimpering cry, pitiful to the ear.
“Want me to do it?” Toki posed. He looked uncertain enough, asking this, and uneasy too. Both boys had wrung the necks of any number of fowl, strangled geese with cords, helped in the slaughtering of the big and fatted pigs. These beasts were dispatched with a word of thanks to Freyr or his sister Freyja for their lives. But they were food; raised, fed and cared for just for that end. Hlaupari was his friend.
“Thanks,” Sidroc muttered, but lowered his head, shaking away the help. Yet it must be done; the dog was suffering. He could not use his knife, that knife also given him by his father.
He rose and went to the workbench there by the door. Hanging over it was one of the small axes used for kindling. He reached for it, closing his hand about the wooden handle, worn smooth as polished bone from so much handling.
He must do it quick or not at all. He returned to his dog, whose whining had grown into a series of strangled yips, the big head moving as if snapping at flies. Yet the body looked unable to stir, the legs no longer thrashing but straight as pokers.
“Hlaupari,” Sidroc called. He held the blunt edge of the axe over the dog’s head. He knew Hlaupari must die sometime soon, but had hoped to awaken one day with the dog sou
ndlessly dead in his sleep. He had not foreseen having to send him.
Sidroc’s jaw was clenched and his eyes swam from under his lowered lids. He hazarded placing one hand on his hound’s shoulder, and with that warm fur under his touch slammed the broad end of the axe down on the head with all his strength. The crack of the breaking skull rent the air.
Hlaupari made no sound. There was a rush of gentle air from the lungs, nothing more. The head fell back, the tongue no longer moving. Sidroc lowered his chin, almost to his chest. His left hand was still upon the shaggy shoulder.
Are there dogs in Asgard, Sidroc asked himself. He had not heard of such, but Freyja herself was said to go about the Heavens in a cart pulled by two cats. Certainly if cats roamed the gold-paved ways of Asgard, hounds too must be admitted. Hlaupari would be waiting for him. He curled his fingers deeper in the fur he held.
He heard Toki moving around him and looked up. He had gotten the drag sling Ful and Yrling used to carry deer from the woods. They could swing Hlaupari’s body on that, pull him to a place to bury him.
They dug together, out by the narrow rivulet that the dog had loved nosing around. Shovelling in the spadesful of dirt was the second hardest thing Sidroc had ever done.
Chapter the Eleventh: Toki
TOKI saw Gunnborga even sooner than he had expected. There was still a week to the Mid-Summer feast and fire, but the maid and her mother came riding in a horse-drawn waggon and stopped at the farm. Gunnborga’s stepfather was with them, mounted on a third horse. A serving man drove the horse waggon, and no one at Ful’s farm was surprised to hear they were headed for Ribe to undertake some trading.
They had not as yet gone far, but Signe made sure water was carried for the horses, and ale for the folk. Gunnborga and her handsome mother were happy to step down from the jolting waggon for a respite. Signe was unsteady that day; if she rose too quickly she was liable to faint, and her guests walked to where she sat in the kitchen yard.
Toki and Sidroc had finished with the buckets they had hauled the horses’ water in, and now lingered just outside the confines of the yard. Toki caught Gunnborga’s eye, and with a jerk of his head invited her to absent herself from where her mother sat chatting with his own. She trailed slightly behind the two boys as they led her around and past the barn. There, in an unused pasture, lay the makings of the Mid-Summer fire.
“So large!” were Gunnborga’s first words. She had made a little squeal at first sight of it; the mound of logs and brush rose far above her head. Mid-Summer was the most joyful of all celebrations, the longest day in the wheel of the year. It heralded the peak of the Sun’s reach, and its coming decline over their days, though the long dusks of lingering daylight would last all Summer.
“And we are not done,” Toki assured her. There was always dead-wood to cut and brush to be cleared, much of which was not suitable for smoking into long-burning charcoal. The great fires welcoming Spring and Summer were best for these forest offerings.
“And did you build it,” she wanted to know, looking at both boys. The expectant look on her face prompted Toki to answer as he did.
“Já, we did,” he said.
Sidroc grinned at this claim, and added, “With Yrling.”
The larger logs, dry as they were, were heavy, and rolling and lifting them wanted both strength and care.
“Mother says I may stay up all night this year,” Gunnborga now told them. Her eyes were still fastened on the brown masses of waiting wood, as if they were already flickering into flaming life.
After a long day of dancing and eating, children rapidly tired, as did the older folk at such gatherings. Often none but the young and unwed men and women stayed up to herald the new day, in a sky that only briefly dimmed. Sidroc and Toki had never been amongst those who sat, far into the night, about the base of the smouldering fire, telling tales and jesting with pretty maids. This kind of wooing would need to wait until they were older.
“I will stay up with you,” Toki made bold to proclaim.
She turned to him, smiling.
“And get you a cup of mead to drink,” he further promised.
Gunnborga’s wide blue eyes widened further. “I may have honey-water, but not mead,” she returned, in a solemn tone. Mead, potent and rich, was quaffed by older folk at such special feasts, never by children.
Sidroc could not keep from sounding a short laugh. Toki had filched the mead jug at one of the Winter’s Feasts, and downed not one but two cups. Sidroc had taken a full swig from it as well, but one deep mouthful only. It had acted on them in surprising ways. After the initial sweetness Sidroc had felt a burning heat in his throat, as if he had swallowed a small coal, a heat that ended in warming pleasure in his belly. The first cup Toki downed had made him loud, and after the second, drunk with equal quickness, he had begun to look cross-eyed. It was all he could do to stagger out into the cold rain, there to retch up the drink, and the good dinner of roast pig which had preceded it. If his father had not been deep in his cups himself his absence may have been noted.
“I will bring you honey-water,” Sidroc said to the girl. It was the first conscious effort he had made at any courting, this offer of his.
She beamed at him. “My mother will like that,” she said.
The lady spoken of was now calling to her daughter; it was time to resume their travels. As they moved away Gunnborga waved from the waggon-board.
“I will bring her mead, and I will kiss her,” Toki said with sudden vehemence as he stood next Sidroc. They had not moved far from where the fire was laid, and Toki’s eyes were looking after the dust rising from the iron-bound wheels of Gunnborga’s waggon.
Sidroc scoffed. “Not likely if you are rolling on the ground, sick.” His cousin turned to him now.
Sidroc could not help the next. “Besides, she likes me, not you.”
Toki swung at him so suddenly that Sidroc had little time to duck. He pulled his chin back, but Toki’s fist still caught him on the side of his head, at the temple. For an instant he saw brilliant flecks of light where the vision in his left eye should be. The next moment he was upon Toki, battering away with both fists.
Toki was well-built and strong for his age, but Sidroc’s longer arms gave him swift advantage, as did his anger at the surprise attack. The boys had scrapped many times before, ending in bloodied noses or blackened eyes. Ful and Yrling had laughed when they had caught them doing so, and sometimes both had been birched, but more often neither.
Sidroc had said nothing but the obvious; his cousin had, a few months ago, drunk himself to sickness, and their neighbour did seem to favour him. Even her mother had suggested that. For Toki to attack him over this made no sense. He gave Toki a final poke, catching him in the left shoulder, spinning him to the ground. He stood over him, panting.
He could jump on him, pin him to the ground until he begged for quarter, but did not. He just stared at his cousin, who lay blinking up at him under tousled yellow hair.
Sidroc stepped back. During the fight Toki had kicked him in the shin, and hard, and he felt the bruise to the bone there. It would hurt for days. He remembered then how a few days ago Toki had brought the drag-sling, and how they had both taken Hlaupari by his stiffened legs and swung him upon it. Toki had worked with him, digging the grave for the dog.
Sidroc’s hand went now not to his sore shin, but out to his cousin, offering him a lift up.
Toki considered the hand his cousin extended to him. It was Sidroc’s long reach that had bettered him. Next time he would use something to extend his own. Now he took the offered hand, and rose to his feet.
A few days later the boys were out moving the sheep to the far pasture. They both had crooks in their hands, but Hlaupari’s loss was sharply felt. Even the querulous ram began trotting when the hound approached, and the ewes needed no more than a glare from his eye. Without him it took the boys some time to drive the flock to the wooden footbridge spanning the narrow dike whic
h parted the pastures. The newly shorn sheep clattered over it, the lambs bobbing and baaing at their mothers’ flanks. Then the cousins hoisted the planked footbridge up, shoving it away to hem the beasts in. This was heavy work, and both had had to run and block the sheep at times as they drove them over. Once done, they started back to the farm.
Sidroc was thinking of Hlaupari, though neither boy had mentioned him. As they walked they passed the burial mounds of the family, beyond which lay only trees. The mounds were covered with grasses, and some too piled with stones of unusual shape or colour. A little distance off and to one side sat those smaller mounds marking freedmen and thralls who had died at the farm. Berthe’s mound was there, the soil still raw and brown, just like that Hlaupari lay under by the runnel of water. Sidroc found his step slowing as he looked at the dead woman’s resting place.
“She is like your mother,” Toki said, of a sudden.
Sidroc turned to look at him. Toki held his crook upon his shoulder, Sidroc’s grasped in his hand hanging at his side. He felt that hand tighten about the shaft of it.
“My father told me,” Toki went on. “You are the son of thrall.”
Sidroc’s protest was as swift as his words were firm.
“She was a freedwoman.”
Toki had ready return. “That means she was once a slave.”
He seemed to know what response this would provoke, as Toki swung his crook around almost as if it were a spear. This angered Sidroc the more, and he whipped the crook he held up, knocking Toki’s from his hands as if it were a staff.
Even as he did this Sidroc was aware of the truth in Toki’s words. He knew his mother was a freedwoman, which did indeed mean she had once been a thrall. But the way Toki said it belied the few things his father had told him about her: that she was a good woman, and kind, and had cared for him. Toki’s words were meant as insult, nothing less.
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