Sidroc the Dane

by Octavia Randolph

  Toki’s hands stung from the way his cousin had knocked the crook out of them, but he curled them into fists just the same.

  “Son of a thrall,” he taunted.

  Sidroc dropped the crook and lunged at the jeering Toki. He gave a yell as he did so, intent on landing the first blow. Toki dodged, and Sidroc’s fist met only air. Toki laughed at him, and began to speak again.

  “Son of a thra – ” was all he got out; Sidroc had found Toki’s cheekbone.

  The blow sent him sprawling, but he jumped up. Even before he had fully straightened himself Toki’s hand was on the sheath that held his knife. This would defeat his cousin’s longer reach. The blade flashed in the sunlight as Toki sprang at the disbelieving Sidroc.

  He seemed to aim right at his cousin’s throat. Sidroc raised his elbow to block the blow. Toki had all his weight behind it, the arm cocked just enough to add strength to the wrist. The tip of the knife found home beneath Sidroc’s left eye, and ripped downward through his cheek.

  It was not a yell Sidroc gave this time, but a deep and strangled gasp. His left hand rose to his face, clapped over the blood beginning to pour there. His right hand joined it, pressing against a slice that felt like living fire.

  He rocked forward, unable to speak. The blood was such that he was not sure if he still had his left eye. He drew his hands down a little. He could see, though the eye was filmed with blood.

  Toki was staring at him, but Sidroc had closed both his eyes against the pain. The backs of Sidroc’s hands were running with blood. Pressed against his face as they were Toki could not see what damage his blade had wrought, but it must be great. He meant in the moment he had pulled his knife to hurt Sidroc, but now that he had, it did not give the satisfaction he sought. He felt cheated of any sense of triumph, cheated and confused. And it was Sidroc’s fault anyway, he had knocked the crook from his hands, it was he who could not stand hearing the truth of his thrall-mother.

  For a long moment Toki struggled, looking on his cousin. A chill rippled through him, despite the warmth of the day; a cool numbness that turned to mounting fear at what he had done. He knew he should say something, beg Sidroc’s pardon for a stupid act, try to staunch the bleeding, at least run to the farm for help. But he could do none of these things. He would beat down the fear. It is your own fault, he kept saying to himself, as if he spoke aloud to Sidroc. None but your own.

  At last Sidroc pulled his hands away. Toki could scarce see the gash for the blood, but it was there, a darker, welling line of open flesh running from beneath the eye and almost to the chin. Still Toki could say nothing, and Sidroc too was silent.

  Sidroc could pull the knife from his own belt and go after Toki, still holding his knife in his hand. He would not, for he knew he would kill Toki if he did so.

  This knowledge, swift and sudden as was his wounding, filled his breast, sweeping all else aside. If I draw my knife, I will kill you. His heart swelled in thumping heat with this awful awareness.

  Instead Sidroc turned away. He walked with long strides past the burial mounds, and into the stand of oak and elm trees behind them.

  Toki waited some little time before returning to the farm. When he appeared, alone, and with a swollen cheek, Yrling took note. The boys’ uncle had spent the day with Ful and the male thralls, riving whole tree trunks, driving wedges to form planks. Now, as Yrling washed up in the kitchen yard, Toki neared.

  “What happened to you?” asked his uncle, tilting his head to Toki’s bruised cheek. The eye was showing slightly purple.

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing looks a lot like your cousin,” Yrling answered. “Where is he?”

  Toki shrugged. Yrling continued to stare at him.

  Finally Toki said, “He ran off.”

  “Ran off?” There was not much that Yrling could think of to make Sidroc run from Toki. “What happened,” he demanded again, his tone now low and grave.

  “He got...cut.”

  “Cut? By your knife? Where did you cut him?”

  “In the face.”

  Yrling pulled his tunic back on, buckled on his belt and knife. “Where did you see him go,” he demanded of his nephew.

  “In the wood, behind the mounds,” Toki answered. He had a grudging tone that made Yrling want to clout him.

  “And you left him?’

  “He went off, I told you.”

  “Come on. We are going for him.” Signe was within the house, a good thing; he did not need female fears on top of this. But Toki hung back.

  “Come on,” Yrling ordered. “You are twice the coward, if you stay behind now.”

  That spurred Toki, and they set out. The woods were too thick for a horse; they would go as Sidroc had, on foot, follow the animal trails until they found him.

  Sidroc walked into the trees with no clear goal; his need to be away from Toki drove him. He felt the blood running from his chin, and his hands were both sticky with it. He stopped and pulled two oak leaves and pressed them against the wound. The blood held them there, at least for a few more steps. He had nothing to stop the bleeding with, and the plants used for this, such as earthgall and woodruff, grew back in the herb patch Signe tended; he knew of nothing in a forest which might serve the same.

  He kept moving forward amongst the oaks and elms. The shade cast from their leafy boughs was broken by bright glades into which sunlight fell. Some ferns grew there, in dappled light, and he wondered if they be good for wound-care, but he went forward without stopping to pluck them, aware only of the searing pain and his growing thirst. He felt the bleeding begin to slow, then stop. The whole side of his face felt fiery-hot.

  This wood was crossed with streams, most of which would have water this early in the season. He would find one, wash the wound as well as he could. The smell of the blood filled his nostrils, and more than once he swatted at flies drawn by it. The fingers of his hands felt stuck together by the drying blood; he shook them to rid them of the helpless sensation.

  He found a rivulet of water. It barely flowed, and there were fine cobwebs dusted with spores from ferns floating above the still surface. He knelt on the damp mosses and thrust his hands in, shaking off the blood underwater, letting the slight chill of the wet cool them. Then he bowed his head nearer and pulled handfuls onto his face. He almost yelped at the touch of it; the rawness of the wound made even water an irritant. But he caught his breath and splashed more on. When it ran clear of dried blood he touched his cheek. He traced one finger along what he thought was the side of the cut; he could not be sure where the wound began and ended. He felt the bone under the eye, recalled the flash of the knife tip coming at it. The eye was spared, yet he knew the wound to his cheek to be a grievous one.

  He sat back on his heels. Odin, All-Father, had one eye. But he had offered that which was lost willingly, so that he might gain foresight. His was almost taken from him, with nothing granted in return.

  I did not kill Toki, he reflected. I did not kill my kin. Mayhap that was what was granted him, a gift he had given himself.

  He bent over the water, tried to clear it with his hands. He lifted some to his mouth, thought he tasted his own blood. Some must still be on his mouth. He tried to touch alongside the cut again, as a way to see and know it. The whole length of it was pulsing, making of the pain an animate thing.

  I did not kill him, he said to himself once more.

  He lowered his hand, thought of what he should next do. He could rest a while longer, then rise and make his way back to the farm. But just now, kneeling in this quiet wood, he could not consider this.

  He had his knife. In the pouch on his belt he had the sharp flint and iron striker he carried every day. He could find a deeper stream, a forest pool, whittle a sapling to a point, spear fish and roast them. He could make snares from slender vines and set them, catch small game. These things arose, one by one, into his thoughts, and he turned them over in his mind. He need not go back, not until
he wanted to.

  Yrling did not wait until he reached the burial mounds before he began whistling for Sidroc. He put two fingers to his mouth and blew out the shrill call he used, that which told the listener it was Yrling who approached. He walked so rapidly that Toki must needs almost break into a trot to keep up.

  Before they chose a deer track and entered the woods, Yrling paused, lifted both cupped hands to his mouth, and called out Sidroc’s name. Nothing but the buzzing drone of insects returned to their ears. He bellowed a second time, then followed that with a whistle. Silence.

  They plunged into the trees, Yrling leading. They would be missing their supper, but Toki knew enough not to say anything about it. Yrling had already named him a coward, and he must prove he was not. He might have a good birching coming to him, from his father if not from Yrling as well, and must make the cut seem an accident. If he did not help to find Sidroc now, it would look the worse for him later.

  It was almost dark before they returned to the place of burial. Yrling had gone as deep into the wood as he could cover, describing a broad arc through the trees and dells, whistling and calling. If Sidroc heard him, he would not, or could not, answer.

  Yrling cursed the death of the boy’s hound. Hlaupari would have led them to him, he was certain. As it was he could do no more tonight. Toki had said almost nothing the whole time, not even complained, which was rare. He would deal with him once Sidroc was back, not before. Now they emerged from the wood, thirsty and hungry. Winking across the gloom of coming night they saw the cooking fire in the kitchen yard, and made for it.

  Sidroc had heard a distant whistle, and known it to be Yrling’s. In his dulled state it washed over him, not as a summons, but as some lesser echo of his uncle’s being. He had risen from the watercourse at which he stopped, and gone on into the trees, looking for a deeper stream, one at which he would make his simple camp. He had not found it. The pain of his wound, his weariness, the weight of his thoughts, all had slowed his steps. The forest undergrowth was thick where he was, and pressing forward more difficult. After a time he saw a young ash, and dropped down at its roots, his back against the straightness of the trunk.

  He tipped his head on the grooved bark. It was dusk, and the leaves made only the gentlest of soughing in the lessening wind. He closed his eyes. It was then he heard the whistle, floating from afar, yet distinct, that from Yrling. He heard it once. He could rise, whistle back. He even put his fingers to his mouth. The act of lifting his upper lip brought a wave of new pain to his cheek. He let his hand drop back to his side.

  The heat of the throbbing awoke him during the night. He tried once to lie flat, but it made the pulsing in his face the greater. He sat up, back against the ash, and dozed as he could.

  A woman came, one clothed in light. She shimmered before him. He could not see her face clearly, but felt her beauty. He tried to speak to her, but it hurt to move his mouth. Tell me what to do, he asked, without words.

  At dawn he awoke, and stood up. The pain was different now, steadier. If he lowered his head it grew fierce. He kept it up, stood there a moment with one hand on the rough bark of the ash.

  She was my fylgja, he told himself. My guardian spirit, from my father. From Yrling, who called to me. I must go back, back to the farm.

  He made his way, slowly but with sure steps, back along the track he had taken. He came out of the trees at a point nearer the house than where he had gone in. Oddi was out with the cows, and when he saw Sidroc he made haste towards him.

  He saw his aunt, sitting where she often did, at one of the work tables in the kitchen yard. Ful too appeared, out from the barn. As he neared them Yrling came from behind Ful, and began to run to him.

  It was Yrling reached him first. The look on his uncle’s face said much to Sidroc. Yrling stopped before him with opened mouth, brow furrowed, his eyes locked on Sidroc’s face. His grimace silently summed up Sidroc’s wound. Then Yrling swallowed, gestured with his hand to come.

  Oddi was next. He looked shaken, but with Ful and Yrling watching would make no move towards the boy.

  Signe was trying to rise from her bench, but the thrall-woman Ebbe was holding her back. His aunt reached her arm out to Sidroc as he neared the table at which she sat.

  “Hrald. Hrald,” she called him. Her words were choked by her tears.

  Sidroc blinked at what she said. Did he look so much like his lost father, or was she asking forgiveness for what had happened of he who had been her brother? He shook his head in answer, feeling the stiffness of the cheek.

  Ful joined them, and fixed his narrowed eyes on Sidroc. He turned his head and bellowed out his son’s name, then spat upon the hard ground. Toki came out from around the back of the barn, and stood where his father pointed he should stand, at his mother’s right hand, facing Sidroc.

  Ebbe had fetched linen and a basin. Signe had calmed enough to speak again, and now slipped a large bronze key off the keeper at her waist. “Get him a cup of mead,” she rasped, in the direction of both Ful and Yrling. Yrling took it, and came back from the brewing shed with a small pottery cup sloshing with the golden liquid. He put it in Sidroc’s hand.

  “Drink it,” he ordered.

  Sidroc took a gulp. His mouth was stiff, and it hurt more to drink, but drink he did. The first mouthful was as he recalled it from Jul, the honeyed sweetness giving way to warmth as it went down. Empty as his belly was, that warmth spread rapidly through him.

  His aunt had soaked a piece of linen in the basin, and now held it to his face. “It is so swollen,” she breathed, when she had pulled the dripping cloth back. “It has some taint, methinks.”

  Her next words were for Ebbe. “A poultice of woodruff, pounded with butter,” she asked.

  Ebbe nodded and moved off to the rows of herbs.

  Ful had been staring with unmoving eyes at Sidroc, and now gave Toki a push in the back. “What do you think of your handiwork, son?” he posed.

  Toki was looking at his shoes. His father gave him another poke, almost making him trip. Toki shook his head like a bothered animal.

  Ful was not done with him. “Maybe I should mark you like you marked him.”

  Toki jerked his head up at this, and to his father.

  Sidroc felt his own eyes blaze, but he was not looking at Ful. The word marked was sounding in his head.

  That night Toki had as well to do Sidroc’s chores, the last of which was securing the hens. After he had latched up the fowl house he crossed near the open door of the barn. A figure lunged at him, wrapped an arm about his shoulders, and pulled him inside, crushing him against a strong chest. The free hand of he who grabbed him held a knife, the blade gleaming dully in the low light. That blade now came straight to Toki’s face.

  “Uhhh…” All Toki could do was gasp.

  “The Gods gave you everything, Toki,” he heard his uncle breathe. “How would you like to lose some of that, right now?”

  Toki tried, with a violent wrench of his shoulders, to free himself, but Yrling’s strength was far too great.

  “I can make you two more equal, with just the tip of my knife,” his uncle crooned.

  Toki’s eyes were nearly crossed, focussed as they were upon the point of the blade, but a short span from his eye. He could not have spoken if he wanted to; the breath was nearly being squeezed out of him.

  “Even your father thinks it would be just.” His uncle’s voice bore a calmness that made it all the more chilling.

  The words dropped like lead weights in Toki’s ears. Yrling could not mean this; he could not mean that he would scar him. His uncle had relaxed his grip upon him, and Toki drew a panicked gasp of air. Then he tried to throw his head back and away from the blade, and began thrashing, flailing with his free arm and kicking with his feet. Anything to escape.

  But Yrling was quick. The arm which had held Toki’s shoulders in a talon-like grip now moved, and came to his face. Yrling shoved him against the barn wall.
His uncle was now directly before him, holding Toki by the face, pinching his cheeks painfully with his grasp.

  “You are a coward, Toki,” Yrling told him. “Let us see how well you bear up now.”

  The blade, which had been withdrawn a short distance, now made straight for Toki’s left cheek. Water ran from his eyes, and if Yrling had not been holding him so strongly, his trembling legs would have crumpled under him.

  A stammering wail sounded from between his pinched lips. “Nej,” he tried. “Nej…”

  More than tears were now running; he felt the hot flow of his urine wetting his leggings, running down his leg.

  “Nej, nej,” he begged. He closed his eyes against the shame of wetting himself, closed his eyes against the coming cut upon his face.

  He felt no touch of cold steel. Instead he felt his uncle’s grip loosen, then free him entirely. When he opened his eyes Yrling was staring at him.

  His uncle’s eyes raked down to Toki’s trembling knees, saw the darkening stain.

  “Ha!” There was no note of triumph there, only disgust.

  Toki shifted his head from left to right, trying to see through the gloom of the barn. They were alone; neither Sidroc nor his father were there to witness his shaming. At least Yrling had spared him that.

  He looked back to his uncle. Yrling still held his knife, but lowered, and at his side. His uncle asked a question now, a harsh demand.

  “What did you two fight over?”

  Toki’s thoughts scrambled back to the burial mounds. “His mother.”

  Yrling let out a short breath. “Women. Women or silver are at the heart of every fight.”

  He shook his head, whether at Toki’s answer or Toki himself, the boy could not know.