Geirmund's Saga

by Matthew J. Kirby

“Can he not speak for himself?” Rek asked. “Or does he always hide behind his–”

  “Enough!” Eskil shouted, and Rek flinched.

  “Brother, I only–”

  “You have drunk too much ale,” Eskil said to him. “I suggest you go to your tent while you can still find it.”

  Some of the Danes laughed at that, and Rek’s face reddened. He glared at Geirmund, shaking with murderous rage, but eventually he turned and stalked away from the circle into the darkening night. Eskil shook his head, and then he returned to where he had been sitting, leaving Geirmund to feel the weight of the other Danes’ stares.

  Steinólfur glanced around the circle. “Come,” he said. “The boy will be wondering where we are.” He nodded in the direction from which he had appeared.

  But Geirmund still felt ready for a battle, as if armed with spears and arrows that needed a new target. He swung around and looked again at Eskil, who in turn stared only at the fire, and then he searched the faces of the other Danes for a new challenger. When it seemed that none would meet him, he cursed and followed Steinólfur, who led him through the tents and leather sleeping sacks towards a large growth of buckthorn.

  “You’ll want to stay clear of Rek for a time,” the older warrior said. “Like all men of the sea, he looks for signs, and he always finds them.”

  “How can I stay clear of him?” Geirmund asked. “He’s the commander.”

  “On the Wave Humper, yes, but I’ve been talking with the Danes. Rek is a skilled shipman, but it is well known that his brother is the better warrior. At sea Eskil chooses to pull an oar with the crew, but on land his authority is second only to Guthrum’s.”

  They arrived at a small campfire, around which a restless Skjalgi fretted and paced.

  “Who’s second to Guthrum?” the boy asked.

  “That explains much,” Geirmund said, remembering the way the other hole-men had deferred to Eskil, and how his brother had obeyed him just moments ago. “How many warriors has Guthrum gathered for the Dane-king?”

  “They say he has forty ships.” Steinólfur sat near the fire and motioned for Skjalgi to do the same. “Settle yourself, boy, you’re agitating me.”

  Skjalgi blinked, but clamped his mouth shut and sat, and then Geirmund joined them. Steinólfur handed out food from their provision store, a few strips of dried and salted meat, some crisp rye bread, hard cheese, and dried fruit. As they ate, the older warrior went on.

  “Most of Guthrum’s ships are snekkja like Wave Humper. But some are skeiðar with sixty oars.”

  Geirmund reckoned the number of warriors that many ships could carry. “So Guthrum has an army of at least two thousand.”

  “He does,” Steinólfur said. “Why do you ask?”

  “I’m trying to measure his standing with Bersi and the other jarls.”

  “Making sure you’ve sworn us to the right Dane?” The older warrior tossed another piece of wood on the fire.

  “Guthrum is the right Dane,” Geirmund said, though he couldn’t explain yet what made him so. He only knew that fate had put him on Guthrum’s ship. “We should get sleep now, while we can. We sail soon, I think.”

  They unrolled their sleeping bags of walrus hide, one for Geirmund and one for Steinólfur and Skjalgi to share, though each húðfat was sewn large enough to accommodate two grown men. There hadn’t been much dry wood left near the encampment to gather, but Skjalgi threw the last of it into the fire before climbing into the sack with the older warrior.

  “Hold your farts until morning, boy,” Steinólfur said, lying on his back, eyes closed, with his hands folded across his chest.

  Geirmund grinned at Skjalgi to let the boy know he was aware who would be more guilty of that crime. Then he climbed into his own sleeping sack, but he didn’t fall asleep right away. He looked up at the stars, thinking on what Bragi had said about war between men and gods, and he imagined the stars going out like snuffed lanterns after the final battle and destiny of Óðinn, and Thór, and all the other Æsir and Vanir, leaving the sky a gaping abyss, a new Ginnungagap into which everything would fall. Geirmund drifted in that oblivion until he was almost asleep, but then Skjalgi whispered his name and brought him back.

  “What is it?” he asked the boy.

  “Why do we make war on the Saxons?” he asked. “Is it a blood feud?”

  Geirmund sighed. “Some might call it that. The Saxons have murdered farmers and their families. Danes trying only to settle and live in peace.”

  “Why did the Saxons murder Danes?”

  “Because Danes murdered Saxons,” Steinólfur said with a growl, awakened by their talk. “Yes, it’s a blood feud, boy. Neither side will ever agree who started it. You can let that keep you awake if you want, so long as you stop talking about it and give the rest of us some peace.”

  Skjalgi went silent after that.

  Geirmund closed his eyes, warm in the walrus hide despite the wind that scoured that coastline. He slept well, though his body and his dreams remembered the rolling of the ship on the waves of the past few nights.

  They spent the next day, and two days more, training Skjalgi in the use of his new sword. Though thin, the boy’s strong arms and legs learned quickly, and he could strike with the speed of a hawk. During that time the three of them kept mostly apart from the Danes, and in that way Geirmund avoided a second confrontation with Rek. But he knew that to be only a delay of the inevitable, unless he was willing to ask Guthrum to put them on a different ship, and he wasn’t willing to do that. Geirmund saw little of Guthrum, who spent most of his time in council with Bersi and the other jarls. Each day the tides brought a few last straggling ships and warriors, but the joining of their spears to the host was like the joining of a single barley stalk to an acre-field of grain.

  On their fourth day at Ribe Geirmund went out into the encampment to see if he could find shields for purchase, which the three of them hadn’t taken from Avaldsnes. He spent the morning asking around and following fruitless leads. The encampment was enormous and chaotic, and it wasn’t until midday that he finally found a Frisian willing to sell.

  The shields he had on offer were used but strong and made of fir. The leather sewn around their rims was tight, the iron straps oiled and free of rust. Geirmund had expected to pay too much for any shield he managed to find, but the Frisian seemed to have no intention of joining Bersi, wanting only to sell his wares before the fleet departed those shores, so Geirmund managed to buy all three shields for two pieces of silver.

  On the way back to Jarl Guthrum’s section of the encampment, he passed several tents in which women offered themselves for less than silver. One of them waved and called to him, and for a moment her blond hair and red cheeks enticed him. But he now carried three shields, one on his back and another in each hand, and he had too much silver with him to risk its theft by one of the woman’s friends, so he made the safer choice and continued on his way.

  The next day, he and Steinólfur had planned to show Skjalgi how to stand in a shield-wall, but they had barely begun their instruction before word went through the encampment that the fleet was to sail. Then Guthrum appeared among them, smelling of mead, and gave the official command to make their offerings to the gods and load his ships for the invasion of England.

  8

  The fleet enjoyed calm seas for two days, but on the third a storm roared down from the north without sign or warning. The howling winds and ferocious waves scattered the ships, leaving each to fight its own battle for the life or death of its crew. Rek ordered Wave Lover ’s sail lowered to save it from tearing free, and every man pulled his thousand strokes at the oar.

  Geirmund took his turn rowing, then his turn with the bailing bucket, then back to the oar, until his legs and his arms felt as useless as sodden reeds, and he could barely see through the wind and rain and saltwater spray that tore at his eyes. Without the
sun there were no daymarks, and the storm seemed endless. Geirmund soon lost himself to the rhythm of the oar and couldn’t say whether days or hours had passed.

  Wave Lover was well built and rode high in the water, whether atop a swell or in a trough so deep it turned dark as night until they climbed out of it. But there were times when the waves and currents twisted the ship until its prow and sternpost seemed to point in opposite directions, and that flexing wrenched gaps between the strakes and let water in. When Guthrum learned that Steinólfur had spent time at sea and knew something of boats, he gave the older warrior the task of packing the leaks with tarred wool. Skjalgi worked with him, and the boy soon learned the method of it, after which Steinólfur left him to it and went back to rowing and bailing. But it was a futile cause, for as soon as Skjalgi stopped one leak, two more would open.

  As Geirmund worked next to Guthrum, bailing the water that poured in, Rek staggered over to them and shouted.

  “Ægir and Rán want to swallow us! They want us dead!”

  Guthrum laughed. “Ignore them! Óðinn is with us!”

  Rek looked at Geirmund. “Will Óðinn save the ship that carries a child of Hel?”

  That question seemed to change the direction of the wind. Geirmund could see doubt splitting the strakes of Guthrum’s courage, and that split spread almost instantly down the length of the ship’s crew.

  “I say we offer the Hel-hide to Ægir!” Rek said. “Let the jötunn have him!”

  “No!” Steinólfur left his oar and struggled across the pitching deck. “You’ll have to kill me first, and I swear I’ll take Danes with me!” He pointed at Rek. “Starting with the coward!”

  The altercation had attracted Eskil and Skjalgi, and Geirmund did not need to be a seer to know how this would end.

  “Brother, stop this!” Eskil shouted.

  “No!” Rek’s eyes bulged as he pounded his chest. “I give the commands aboard this vessel!”

  “Surely Jarl Guthrum gives the commands!” Steinólfur said, but Geirmund could see plainly that the crew sided with Rek.

  Guthrum looked at Geirmund, water pouring off his brow, and Geirmund knew what had to be done. He could see that the jarl felt fear enough, of the storm and of his own men, that he would not refuse the ship’s commander’s challenge. If that led to a fight, then Steinólfur and Skjalgi would die alongside him, even if they managed to kill a few of the Danes, for the crew outnumbered them ten men to one. To spare the lives of his companions, Geirmund had to prevent the fight, and he knew Rek would only be satisfied with one outcome.

  “It is said that Half and his men were each willing to throw themselves into the sea to save the others.” He turned to Steinólfur. “Farewell, my friend,” he said, and he leapt over the side of the ship.

  The sea rushed up to snatch him in its icy grip, and then all went quiet as he plunged beneath the waves. The fury returned a moment later as he fought his way up and breached the surface, where Steinólfur screamed his name and reached down to him, leaning halfway over the gunwale. The older warrior made to leap into the water to save Geirmund, but Eskil held him back.

  The swift current pulled Geirmund away from the ship. His hand reached for a passing oar in an instinctive attempt to stay alive, but he quickly withdrew his arm and let both the oar and the ship slip beyond his reach.

  This was not the life-end he had imagined when he left his father’s hall.

  But, clearly, it was to be his fate.

  Guthrum’s ship had not even left Geirmund’s view, and already the weight of his armour and clothes dragged him down. Seawater flooded his mouth and filled his nose. He gagged and gasped, but he had no strength left to fight the sea. Even if he had, it would make no difference, for no one could defy what the Three Spinners had decided.

  When you see your fate, there is but one thing to be done. You must meet it.

  A calm came over him then, an acceptance of what had been decreed. Geirmund pulled his knife free of its sheath, the only weapon he could hold to face his death as a warrior. Then he ceased to fight, took one last breath, and let the sea pull him down, down, down into the dark and endless void of a watery Ginnungagap. Down where there were no waves, and the storm couldn’t reach him, where Ægir’s cold and iron grip crushed all, whether Northman, Saxon, or Dane.

  Geirmund held his breath, his unthinking body still unwilling to relinquish its desperate hold on life, but there would soon be no choice. The pressure of the sea squeezed his head and stabbed his ears. The burning in his lungs spread through his body, a kind of starvation in every muscle and joint. When he opened his eyes, he saw sparks in the frozen darkness, like the embers of Muspelheim drifting around him.

  One of the sparks did not move, a speck of light beneath him that grew steadily brighter and larger. Rán was coming to witness him drown and claim her offering. He closed his eyes, but the light remained, bright enough to turn his vision red, and he shook with a roaring in his bones. When he could hold his breath no longer, he opened his mouth and inhaled the sea. Ice and salt filled his lungs with cold fire. He tried not to fight, but lost control of his limbs and thrashed against a god. The light brightened until it seared his eyes, blinding him and burning the thoughts from his mind until there was nothing of him left in his skull.

  Then he saw nothing, and when he opened his eyes again he was lying in the middle of an enormous hall, its roof and its walls too distant and dark to measure, and he seemed to be alone. His whole body ached, as if every part of him had been bruised, and he sat up slowly, remembering himself. Only a moment ago he had been drowning, but his clothing was now merely damp, and his knife was back in its sheath at his belt.

  The bed he rested upon appeared to be made of steel, with an impression in the shape of his body at its centre. Geirmund had never before seen or heard of a bed like it, and he couldn’t understand why a smith would put so much good metal to such pointless use. The walls and floor that surrounded him were made from a dark stone, polished and hewn of a piece, as though carved into the heart of a mountain, and he could see no lantern, torch, or other source for the hall’s dim light. He began to think he must have found his way to the house of a god, or perhaps a jötunn.

  He assumed he was dead, but he knew he wasn’t in Valhalla. He saw no other warriors, smelled no food for feasting, and heard no sounds of fighting, and he also knew he had not fought and died in a way that would please Óðinn, with only a knife in his hand. He next considered the possibility that the darkened hall belonged to the goddess Hel. It was surely cold enough to be the realm of the dead, but if it were, he wondered why it appeared empty, save for himself. If the hall didn’t belong to Óðinn or Hel, he might have sunk into the realm of Rán, but this place did not resemble the stories of her coral caves. With no plain answer and no other guesses as to where he might be, he decided to go in search of his host.

  As Geirmund rose from the metal bed, he found his legs and feet steadier than he had expected them to be. The pain and weakness in his bones had likewise begun to ease, but he had always thought the dead would feel no pain, and he decided that those sensations had been only a lingering memory of his death.

  He peered into the reaches of the hall and glimpsed a distant doorway. As he moved towards it, he discovered it to be an arch, sharp and narrow like the tip of a spear, as high as three tall warriors and a bit wider than the span of Geirmund’s arms. The opening led into a long tunnel, which he followed towards a gleaming light that flickered at the far end.

  Some distance along the corridor, the polished stone came to an end, and beyond that point the walls and ceiling appeared to be made of a kind of crystal or glass. Geirmund would not have believed so much of the precious material could be gathered in one place, nor shaped by any being other than a god. As he admired its beauty and craftsmanship, he realized that the crystal was perfectly clear, and that what he had first taken for a dark hue with
in the glass was outside it. He stepped back from the wall to the centre of the tunnel and looked upwards, mouth gaping.

  He was underwater. Under the sea. Rán had taken him into her realm, which meant he might not have died, after all.

  Geirmund peered again through the crystal wall into the black abyss beyond, which seemed alive with enormous and barely glimpsed shadows. Along the seafloor he could almost make out the shapes of what he imagined to be standing stones, or the broken trunks of trees. And somewhere in that vastness the serpent Jörmungandr waited for his time to awaken and rise.

  “Thór protect me,” Geirmund whispered, and even that echoed loudly against the crystal walls.

  He pulled himself away from the abyss and turned again to face the end of the tunnel with its glowing light, which he approached more cautiously now that he thought he might not have drowned after all, and could still die. He had left his sword on Guthrum’s ship, which left him with Bragi’s bronze knife as his only weapon. He drew it as he reached the end of the corridor, where he peered around its edge into a second chamber.

  The room was smaller than the first hall, but made of the same stone, its walls and floor decorated with carvings and paths of inlaid silver. An altar stood against one wall, surrounded by a shroud of light that appeared to move and swing like a tapestry. Within that light, upon the altar, sat a golden arm-ring, which glinted and drew Geirmund into the room towards it, though he stopped a few paces away, wary of meddling with the god-treasure.

  “You may take it, if you wish.”

  Geirmund cried out and spun round.

  The voice had seemed to come from everywhere, loud and strong, and when Geirmund looked for its source, he discovered a man had appeared in a corner of the room behind him. The stranger stood taller than Geirmund by two hands, and he glowed with a pale light, like that of the moon. He wore a tunic of fine linen or silk, with plates of armour and a helm crafted from silver. He was obviously a god, but Geirmund refused to bow until he knew which god he would be honouring.