Sidroc the Dane

by Octavia Randolph

  Sidroc was wrong; the door was not yet locked. He watched her push it open and vanish within. She must have wanted a final look. In a short time she came out. He watched her hand rise, saw her lay it flat upon the thick planks of the door. She stood still, palm pressed against it.

  He had had no such farewell to his father’s farm. Indeed it scarcely felt his home with his father gone, unwanted as he was. He looked away, recalling this. When he turned back she was before him, smiling.

  “I give this into your trust,” she told Sidroc, pressing it into his hand. It was an old key, the thumb turn worn from years of use, but the teeth, the working end, were sharp and ready. He helped her up and they settled themselves.

  The horse ambled forward at the merest shake of the reins he held. Sidroc felt Åfrid was more than able to drive her own horse, but the way she grasped her mantle about her as they pulled out let him know she welcomed his help. A moment later she told him so.

  “I thank you for coming for me. It saves my nephew the trip. It is enough they must take an old crone into the household.” She laughed, almost playfully, at naming herself thus. “So I thank you.”

  He made a low sound, and gave an awkward shrug. He had been told to do this by Ful, and so far it was proving light duty. But he admired her once more, for jesting about her age. It would be terrible to be old, and he was glad he would die young, and he hoped, in glory. Not too young, he also hoped.

  She had not turned back for a final glimpse; he respected that too. She had made her decision, sold the place to Ful, and was moving on. Her husband was buried here; he must be, though the mound was out of sight; she was leaving him too.

  The skies above them were still grey, but the clouds less threatening. As they moved forward, following an eastward track, he asked her a question, one prompted by his being there with her.

  “You have no children?” he wanted to know.

  Åfrid gave a soft sigh. “Two who lived; daughters, good girls, both. They wed two brothers. But they are far away, in Skania.”

  Sidroc nodded. They were then overland and several short sails off. Girls were destined to wed and move away, sometimes far from their folk and farms. She had no living child near, and so now went to live with her nearest kin.

  She was seated on his right, and he was aware that she was looking at him.

  “How many Summers have you?” she asked.

  He turned his chin slightly toward her. “Fourteen.”

  She did not look surprised, though others might have been. With his height, and especially his scar, folk often thought him older.

  “Thinking of maids all the time,” she surmised.

  He felt the warmth come to his face, but hoped it did not show. Girls and women were very much on his mind; his body’s urgings would not allow otherwise.

  His eyes were fastened on the chestnut rump of her old horse. She began to hum a little tune, and then stopped herself to speak again.

  “You are Sidroc,” she began. “You did not speak your name back there.”

  “I thought you knew,” he mumbled, uncertain. Of course she knew his name, even if they had never really spoken.

  “It is good we are paired, you and I,” she went on. “It is an old woman who can best teach a young man.” She paused, not hiding her smile at his startle. “Not the things of the flesh – those things are easily discoverable yourself – but the greater wisdoms.”

  He dropped his eyes further, to the worn leather of the reins he held. He was not ready for what she said next.

  “That is quite a scar you bear.” This was a gentle observation, nothing more. “Who gave it deserves your thanks.”

  Gave it, Sidroc thought, of his marred face. Toki did it, if that was what she meant.

  “It was my cousin Toki.” This sharp and bitter fact sat in the air between them.

  “He deserves your thanks.” She repeated this lightly; lightly, and quietly.

  He straightened at this madness from her mouth.

  “I came close to killing him.” It was spoken with the harshness he felt.

  She clucked. “Yet you did not. He did you great service, two of them in fact.”

  He jerked his chin up. “How can you say that?”

  “Your face proves the true from the false. Those fooled by showy gilt, and those who know gold. You count what you have lost, and not what you have gained. Those with true vision will …” she paused here, as if probing for words, “…still see you.

  “There is no greater gift,” she ended. “To be seen.”

  To be seen, he thought. His height made him stick out, young as he was. He was noticed, he knew. But to be seen…

  “Who are you,” he asked her, a question deeper than her name.

  She laughed, in dry and cheerful mirth. “An old woman. One of the unseen. We vanish from sight, we women, when you men cease to notice us.”

  “I see you.”

  “And you may continue to see us. You are marked out, different from many of your kind.”

  He gave a short and rueful laugh. “Já. I am marked.”

  “Not that,” she answered quickly. “Not that life-line you bear on your face, showing how crooked a course you must travel.”

  He started at this. Was she some teller of fortunes, who could look at a man’s scar as well as his hand, and predict his Fate? He fell silent, turning this over, wanting to ask more, and yet wanting to return to what she had just told him.

  “What was the second service Toki rendered me?”

  “Ah. What you gained a moment after. You could have killed your cousin; I believe you. Yet you did not.” Her words slowed, her light tone deepening at the graveness of the act.

  “It takes as much courage – more – to hold back, than it does to thrust forward. You gained the sense of your own courage, your own strength.”

  He had turned the left side of his head slightly away during this, his chin set, eyes staring at the grasslands they slowly rolled through. He had seen his father hold back time and again from lashing out in word or deed at his wife. That same restraint must have helped him stay his hand against Toki.

  He shifted his gaze ahead once more, and saw her nod, as if to herself, before she spoke again. “So the wound brought you two gifts. A test for others. And knowledge of yourself.”

  They rolled on a little further before she broke the silence.

  “The scar you bear – you will be known for it. But that is of the skin, only. You were marked long before that; before your imagining. Before your birth.”

  He let this settle in his brain a moment, then looked back at her. He could not but ask the next. “Who…who marked me?”

  She squeezed her eyes shut. “Prow to stern…fore and aft…a woman,” she recited.

  “What woman?”

  “Ah…bright. One of brightness.”

  My fylgja, he thought. The woman who came to me as I lay against that ash, bleeding…

  “The ship – what has it to do with her?”

  She looked down a moment. “A journey takes you to her.”

  It made no sense. His fylgja was with him, always. He had no need to board a ship to find her.

  “Tell me more about the woman,” he asked.

  “Ah. The bright one.” She squeezed her eyes closed. “She has you. But you cannot have her.”

  Then it must be the fylgja. “I cannot have her?”

  “She is but young.”

  His fylgja was ancient; she had to be, if she had served as guiding-spirit for him, his father, and grandsire past…

  “So it is a real woman you are speaking of?”

  “She is young,” she stressed, as if this were the reason for his denial.

  He was looking at her from the tail of his eye now, almost unwilling to do more. Again he wondered who she was. Other women gave prophecies, but after they had chanted, chewed certain roots, drank potions steeped from herbs. Here was an old woman
sitting next him, doing none of this, yet seemingly telling him what Fate had in store.

  “You are a wand-carrier, a völva?” he asked, naming the title given to such a seeress.

  “Nej,” she objected. “Even herbs cannot summon what I see. There are men or women I near, who rouse the spirit to speak within me. Nothing more. It comes of its own. And goes.”

  She might be mad, or addled with age, but he wanted to hear more. He would hazard a further question.

  “What else?”

  Åfrid answered with a question of her own. “Who do you worship? Not just make Offering to, but truly worship?”

  He chewed his lip, thinking. All-Father Odin was the choice of wise men – and those who knew treachery. Most warriors chose laughing Thor, red of hair and beard, with his mighty war-hammer Mjolnir, which never missed its mark and returned without fail to the God’s hand. Loki the Trickster meant disaster, which seemed to touch everyone but he himself. He was lucky and deserved respect, if only for the damage he could wreak. But Loki could never be his choice; he did not want to fear who he worshipped. Baldr was the God of light, beloved by all, and Bragi had the gift of poetry and song, and wed to the lovely Idunn; but with his face, Sidroc could not find a model in such as these. At last he spoke.

  “Tyr.”

  “Ah. Tyr. The God of Law. You have known great injustice, and his arm will guide you. A good choice.”

  Sidroc had never heard Tyr referred to this way before, but it made sense to him. Tyr was a warrior God, but a thoughtful one. When Fenrir the giant wolf allowed himself to be bound by a magical thread that gnomes had woven, he demanded that one of the Gods place his hand in his mouth as a pledge. Only Tyr would do so. When Fenrir found he had been tricked, he bit off and swallowed the God’s sword-hand. Yet Tyr bore his loss without complaint. He understood the justice of his forfeit. Deceit had been used when none was promised. One might indeed consider Tyr the God of Law for this.

  He felt she was studying him, and when he looked back to her, she spoke again, with another question. “Bethink you, though, of any God who might choose you, and honour them.”

  He felt the puzzlement showed on his face. How could a God choose one on Midgard? It was too much to ask. But the old woman was going on, answering for him.

  “One day you will want Freyja on your side.”

  Freyja. Völvas were always dedicated to her.

  He took this in. Freyja, that wild beauty, Goddess of lust and battle, giver of life, protector of all beasts of the field, she who as an equal to Odin himself welcomed slain warriors into her gemmed hall in Asgard.

  “How do you know all this?”

  “I do not. But I feel much. Because Death is near me. She has, I feel, once grasped you by the ankles, young as you are, tried to pull you down.”

  His father’s fish net pulling him under. He let out a breath as he nodded.

  “Yet you live,” she went on. “And you nearly died.”

  “Já, almost.”

  She was staring at him, as if she would brook no half measures.

  “What saved you?’

  He was ready with his answer. “My father.”

  She gave her head a decisive shake. “Not who. What saved you.”

  This was another, and quite different question, he realised.

  It came back to him in a flood of sensation, the fish net tangling round him, the rough feel of the small and tight knots of its mesh as his fingers tried to beat it away, the cold saltiness of the water filling mouth and nose. The pull of the heavy net-weights. The sense that the more he struggled the surer the net coiled about him like a spider’s web, trapping him under. He thought of how he freed one hand and reached it out above the surface of the cold waves.

  “My arm. I reached my arm up. My father could catch me then.”

  “Out of Death’s pull.” She nodded. “You will make your way with that arm. And with your grasp.”

  My arm, he thought. Always be reaching, his father had told him, the day he taught him to swim in the lake, the day the sea had nearly taken his life. By reaching he could stay afloat, propel himself through the water, tame it, make a friend of his enemy.

  “Make my way,” he repeated, liking the sound of this. He spoke with real conviction now. “I mean to be a warrior, go raiding, and win treasure.”

  “And I think you shall,” she agreed.

  “My grasp?” He looked at her, for more. Did she mean the sword he would soon hold? Or something larger – glory and gold, that he would seize?

  She looked at his hands, folded about the thin leather of the reins.

  “Your hands are large and well-formed. You will close those hands around much of worth. But only because you have first grasped what you want, in your mind.” A small pause, then a quick release of breath.

  Her pale eyes went to his face, now turned to hers, and her words came slowly. “And much you will discard.” Then with a shake of her grey head, she ended. “Woe betide those who stand between you and your desire.”

  All the long walk back to the farm Åfrid’s words were sounding in his head. It was not only the odd nature of what she had told him, but the telling of it. She spoke to him as if he were already a man, gave him her full notice and attention.

  He wanted to believe what she had said, even though half of it he could not understand. Circling in his mind was her mention of the woman, the bright one, who had him, but who he could not have, because she was too young. Too young? Some maids wed at little more than fourteen, the same age as he was now. What could Åfrid have truly meant – not ready? Perhaps. But maybe she spoke of his fylgja after all, who was both young and old at the same time; she must be, if she had been the guiding spirit to his kin for many generations, but was also the most beautiful woman he could imagine…

  It was wholly dark by the time he neared the farm. If the sky had not cleared, with a half Moon hanging in it, he might have had a hard time finding his way. As he approached the crossing he whistled, and Toki whistled back. He saw his cousin stand up from the stone way-marker he had perched himself on.

  “What took you?” were the first words from Toki’s mouth.

  “If you had shared the walk with me you would know,” Sidroc returned, as they fell in together.

  “Your neck is not broken, so I reckon you stayed on the colt’s back,” Sidroc offered next. “If he let you near him, in the first place.”

  “I am a better rider than you,” Toki protested.

  “Ask any horse,” Sidroc scoffed back.

  Chapter the Fourteenth: The Warrior’s Bargain

  YRLING, true to his word, had placed spears in both his nephews’ hands, the iron heads not forged by Yrling nor Ful but by a true weapon-smith. Under Yrling’s guidance the boys had cut and smoothed the straight and long ash poles which would serve as shafts. These sprung bolt upright from the trunk of a mid-sized ash tree beyond the cattle pasture. A few years ago Ful and Yrling had chopped it down with axes, then sawn the stump flat. With its roots sunk deep in the soil the ash sprouted with vigour, a circle of straight pole-like offshoots rimming the sawn-off edge of the trunk. Such coppiced ashes produced the best shafts for spears, for the round shoots had lively spring to them, far better than any sawn and shaped from a plank. Each boy was given two, a carrying spear for hand-to-hand fighting, and a shorter, lighter throwing spear, with a smaller iron head.

  Yrling and the cousins had cut the stakes a whole year in advance, to give them time to dry, and laid them in the hay-loft in the barn; once fitted they must not shrink and loosen from the spear-head socket. After the shafts were crowned with the tapered heads, the boys held them as a King does his scepter of power. The carrying spears were much taller than the boys; man-sized in fact, for Yrling had trust in their strength, and saw no reason to deny them true men’s weapons. Then their practice could start.

  They began not with the dark and lethal tips, but by holding the shaft in both hands
across the body, like a quarter-stick. Yrling had them spar, pushing and blocking with the poles, forcing the other to give ground through sheer strength, or by a sudden downward thrust at the foot with the blunt end. Strong wrists and shoulders were demanded of such training, as was a solid but fluid stance: knees bent, weight slightly forward. After this came throwing practice, hurling the lighter spear from a standstill and from a run at targets they created of rounds of wood, and straw-stuffed woollen bags strung hanging from tree boughs. Their uncle kept them to this; next year they would begin practice of actual thrusting fight, both two-handedly, and from behind a shield on their left arms.

  Both cousins were strong, and avid learners, and Yrling pushed them. Even Ful could not begrudge the time they spent in such training; chores needed to be complete beforehand, and watching the youngsters and their uncle he secretly admired the skill he saw there. These three were destined for a larger realm than Jutland. As long as Toki returned to take over the farm, he would not stand in his son’s way on the path to treasure.

  The boys felt it too. Yrling had consented to take them both with him to Angle-land, and they wanted to be worthy of that promise. Yrling had sailed three times over the last five Summers, bringing back with him varying amounts of silver, weapons, and slaves. Much of the weaponry and all of the human treasure he took up to Ribe to exchange for more silver. He now had a good sword of his own, one picked up in battle from a slain foe, and owned a steel helmet as well. But he wanted a ship. He had only one-and-twenty years and would have to wait, for to buy or build a ship and outfit it for the North Sea crossing was a rich man’s role. Yet Yrling was determined to hold the steering oar of his own drekar, and to look down the length of his dragon ship knowing all the men aboard it were those he had picked for their boldness and enterprise.

  At the Thing, the Summer law-gathering that year, Sidroc saw two of those men. Once again, his Aunt Signe was not steady enough to go. Ful was feeling poorly in his joints, and did not relish the jolting of the waggon nor the hard bed it offered. No vote of Kingship would be taken, so Oddi was not needed, and he stayed on the farm with them and the thralls. It was Yrling and the cousins who went, Yrling driving Ful’s horse and waggon bearing their camping gear, Sidroc on his uncle’s mare, and Toki mounted as well, as Yrling had one of his mare’s offspring he hoped to sell there. It was a three year old filly, a lighter chestnut than her mother. Riding there was a thrill for the boys; only the well-to-do had horses, and they were sorry Yrling was determined to sell the filly. As they entered the crowded grounds where the Thing was called, they saw youths who looked up at them, and in envy.