Geirmund's Saga

by Matthew J. Kirby

  “I am not leaving you behind,” Geirmund said.

  Vetr placed a hand on Geirmund’s shoulder. “There is nothing more you can do. It is up to fate now, and if Rafn is to die, I wish to be alone with him before he goes to Valhalla.”

  A few moments had to pass before Geirmund could agree. “If I don’t see you at Cippanhamm soon, I will come back for you.”

  “If not there, we will be here,” Vetr said. “Now go, before Birna kills all the Saxons.”

  Geirmund glanced down at Rafn, and then he moved away, out of the woods towards the horses. He went to Enbarr, and his Hel-hides crossed to their mounts, while Vetr took his horse and Rafn’s to lead them back into the trees.

  “Burn that arm,” Steinólfur said. “Otherwise, the hugr in it will torment Rafn with pain and itching he can’t scratch.”

  “I will see to it,” Vetr said.

  With that, Geirmund spurred Enbarr north, but he left behind a plea for the gods to grant Rafn the strength he needed to heal.

  30

  They had travelled ten rests up the Roman road towards Cippanhamm when Skjalgi sighted a mounted war-band racing south along a ridge to the east, and Geirmund halted his warriors to see who the riders might be. The strangers galloped hard, perhaps thirty strong, and they flew no banners.

  “They’re Saxons,” Steinólfur said. “That much is plain by their shields and helms. Beyond that, I can’t–”

  “It is Ælfred,” Eskil said.

  Geirmund strained to see the warriors better. “Ælfred?”

  “Yes, Ælfred.” He spat upon the ground from his saddle. “I saw him at Wareham, and those same warriors were with him. I know the colours of their horses.”

  “What is he doing?” Skjalgi asked.

  “He flees the battle,” Steinólfur said. “Perhaps it has already turned against him.”

  “Perhaps,” Geirmund said.

  He had a choice to make, and only moments to make it, whether to chase the war-band or to ride on towards Cippanhamm. He had only himself and three warriors with him, too few to fight the Saxons. But if Eskil was right, then Ælfred had slipped away from the Danes, which meant the battle at Cippanhamm would not be the end of Wessex, no matter who held the ground at the end, for Wessex would only fall when Ælfred was taken and slain.

  “Are you sure that is him?” Geirmund asked.

  “I would swear it on my brother’s sword,” Eskil said. “That is Ælfred.”

  “Can they have seen us?” Skjalgi asked.

  “They haven’t slowed or changed course,” Steinólfur said, then looked around them. “We’re lower here, with a few trees for cover, and we are only four. They may have missed us.”

  “We must follow him,” Geirmund said. “We cannot fight that many, but we can see where he goes, and perhaps find a way to slay him. If not, we’ll know where he is, and we can return later with more warriors.”

  They all agreed with that plan, so they turned around and rode after the war-band, keeping hidden as best they could while marking the enemy’s path. The Saxons followed the ridge until they reached the northern edge of the Selwood, at which border they came down from the high ground and rode south along the Roman road. Geirmund and his warriors kept back as far as they could without losing track of the king, trusting that even if they were seen, the Saxons would not assume four riders to be enemy Danes sent after them by Guthrum.

  Eventually, they came to the stone that marked the place where earlier that morning they had taken Rafn’s arm. Geirmund saw the bloody patch of ground as they galloped by and wished he could have stopped to see if Rafn still lived, but they had no time for side-paths.

  When the sun dipped low a few rests on, the Saxons halted for the night and made a camp off the road. Neither company lit fires, and Geirmund kept his warriors at a safe distance to avoid any scouts that Ælfred set to watch.

  Before the sun had risen again, the enemy moved on, and that day rode into the upland country of duns and dells that had earlier lifted the Hel-hides above the fens. For six rests they travelled through woods of ash and maple, beneath grassy hills and cliffs of pale stone. When the Roman road dropped from the uplands to the marshes, the Saxons rushed southward for nearly another twenty rests before halting again for a night’s rest. The next morning, they broke west from the road and pushed into the level wetlands.

  “It seems they know ways through the marshes,” Steinólfur said.

  “I think they have known their path since they left Cippanhamm,” Eskil said. “This flight seems planned to me.”

  “To what goal?” Skjalgi asked. “Where do they go?”

  “We will know soon enough,” Geirmund said.

  Then he and his warriors pressed their chase into the fens, through tall grasses and thick stands of alder wrapped in fog, and they kept their feet dry only because the Saxons who led them needed firm trackways for their horses. Even so, the going was often narrow and treacherous, and at midday they came to the end of their hunt and could go no further.

  They crouched in the grass, peering between the reeds as Ælfred and his warriors rode out onto a fastness of small islands chained together by a wooden causeway over a broad mere. A modest village stood on the island nearest the shore, bustling with small ships and defended by a gate and many warriors, but on the second island beyond it the Saxons had raised high stake-walls and a hold among the trees that grew there.

  Eskil shook his head. “It is as I said. This was planned.”

  “I think you are right,” Steinólfur said. “That hold is strong, and it looks newly built.”

  “Can it be taken?” Skjalgi asked.

  The older warrior glanced over his shoulder, back the way they had come. “No army could march over that ground.”

  “Longships could reach it.” Eskil pointed at the water surrounding the island. “That lake must surely meet the sea if–”

  “But Guthrum has no fleet,” Geirmund said, letting his frustration sharpen his voice. “And I am sure Ælfred knows it. He chose this place because he knows the Danes cannot take it, and because it has everything he needs. There is water, and there is food, and it is beyond our grasp. Ælfred could sit on that island and go on calling himself the king of Wessex until he dies of old age.”

  “He can call himself king,” Steinólfur said, “but a king of what? This forsaken marsh?”

  “He is a king of more than land to his Saxons,” Geirmund said. “You must think like a Christian. Ælfred is the king of their god. While he lives, there will always be ealdormen in Wessex who follow him, even from his fen-hall.”

  “Then what can we do?” Skjalgi asked.

  “I do not know,” Geirmund said. “But we must leave that plan for another day. For now we go to Cippanhamm, to fight and to tell Guthrum and the other Danes what we have learned.”

  His three warriors seemed reluctant to leave, and Geirmund understood why. The isle to which Ælfred had fled lay before them, almost within reach of an arrow, and it was maddening to stand so close to their enemy and yet have no power to take him and slay him.

  “Let us be off,” Geirmund said.

  They tried to leave the marsh by the ways they had come, but they became lost several times in the fenland maze of forest, grass, and mire, which further showed the strength of Ælfred’s hold. When they finally emerged from the marsh onto the Roman road, mygg-bitten and tired, the day’s light was spent, and they had to rest for the night before marching north again.

  Two days later, they reached the Selwood standing stone, and Geirmund stopped there to see if Vetr remained in the forest nearby, and what had become of Rafn. They went on foot, leading their horses into the trees, and they found the wounded Dane lying in the same place they had left him. His eyes were shut, and he looked almost as pale as Vetr. It did not seem that his chest moved with any breath beneath the furs. G
eirmund saw no sign of Vetr, but he knew the other warrior would be somewhere close, and as he moved towards Rafn, he wondered if the Dane had ever awakened from the fever and shock in which they had left him.

  Just then, Geirmund heard a low thrust of wind and turned as the head of a spear sliced at his throat from behind a tree, but it pulled away when the warrior wielding it saw who had come.

  “Geirmund!” Vetr planted the end of Dauðavindur in the ground and bowed his head. “Forgive me, I should have looked.”

  “You did look,” Geirmund said, “which is why I still have my head.”

  “Hel-hide?”

  The voice came from the ground. Geirmund glanced down at Rafn, amazed to see the Dane looking back, and then dropped to his knee beside him. “You are alive?”

  “I hope I am alive,” Rafn said, his voice soft and his smile weak. “Because I know I’m not in Valhalla.”

  “You have the strength of Thór,” Geirmund said.

  “And the luck of Týr.” Rafn glanced down at his stump. “But instead of losing my limb to Fenrir’s teeth, I lost mine to a Saxon blade and my own foolishness.”

  “I am sorry,” Geirmund said. “If we could have saved it–”

  “I know.” Rafn looked up at Vetr, and an unspoken meaning passed between them. “It is my own doing. And my undoing.”

  “Nothing is undone,” Geirmund said. “You are still a Hel-hide, and even with one arm, you are twice as deadly as any Saxon.”

  Rafn snorted. “That is no feat, but I thank you for saying it.”

  “How is your arm?” Steinólfur asked.

  “I think Vetr burned it.”

  Skjalgi laughed, but Steinólfur did not. “You know what I mean,” the older warrior said.

  Rafn looked again at his stump. “There is pain. But it heals.”

  Steinólfur turned to Vetr. “Fever?”

  “He burned for two days, but then it broke,” the pale Dane said. “The wound still weeps, but the stream is almost clear.”

  Steinólfur grinned. “That is good to hear. He needs to eat lots of cheese, meat, and honey, and drink plenty of ale.”

  “I can do that,” Rafn said.

  “Can you ride?” Geirmund asked.

  Vetr seemed about to say no for him, but Rafn spoke first. “I will ride. I grow bored of these woods, and there has been little more to eat than squirrel.”

  “Then let us ride,” Geirmund said.

  They moved quickly to pack up their camp, and then they helped Rafn to his feet. He shivered as the furs and blankets fell away from him, and he was less steady on his feet than Geirmund had hoped he would be. The Dane would need someone to ride with him to keep him in the saddle, and since Enbarr was the tallest and broadest mount in their small herd, Geirmund offered his horse for Vetr and Rafn to ride together, while he took Vetr’s animal.

  Despite Enbarr’s strength and easy stride, the sway and hitch in his gait caused pain in Rafn’s stump, which drew sweat and grimaces to his face, though he refused to complain. They halted often to give him rest from it, stretching out their journey and forcing them to spend one more night camped aside the Roman road.

  When at last they arrived at Cippanhamm, they saw the leftovers of battle upon the surrounding land. The town sat on a hillock, and a thin morning mist lurked in the low hollows at its feet. Heaps of rotting Saxon corpses offered bloody harvest to the ravens, foxes, and other animal scavengers, and the faint smell of smoke from the pyres of the honoured dead still lingered in the air. Geirmund tallied the charred stacks of timber and offered his silent gratitude to Óðinn that there were far fewer of them than Saxon bodies, and that, though Ælfred may have fled, it seemed the Danes had taken the field.

  As Geirmund’s small company climbed the hill towards the town, they passed Danes and Saxon thralls digging deep trenches and raising high walls.

  “Guthrum plans to stay and defend this place,” Eskil said.

  “He should be marching on Wintanceastre,” Steinólfur said, and Eskil nodded his agreement.

  After finding an alehouse where Rafn could rest, Geirmund went to seek Birna and his Hel-hides to see how they fared, and it thrilled him with gladness to find her unharmed in body. In her heart and mind, she still mourned the loss of Thorgrim, a cold basin that she had not been able to fill with hot Saxon blood, no matter how much of it she had spilled, though her mood lifted when she learned that Rafn yet lived, and she went looking for him. Of Geirmund’s other Hel-hides, twenty-seven remained, and he greeted each of them before going to look for his parents.

  He tried asking a few Danes in the town where he could find Hjörr and Ljufvina, but each time, upon hearing those names, the Danes cast their eyes downward and simply pointed the way. When Geirmund reached the dwelling to which they had sent him, he learned the reason for their silence.

  His mother sat alone in the shade of an elm tree, on a bench against the wall of the hut where she had been sleeping, and Geirmund watched her without her noticing him. She stared off somewhere beyond the village borders, and her face and her eyes held no feeling and no thought, as if her hugr had left her body. When she did finally look up and see him, a moment passed in which she seemed not to know him, and in the next she awakened and came back to herself.

  “Geirmund,” she said, rising to her feet as he drew near.

  “Mother.”

  They embraced, holding on to one another tightly for some time, saying nothing, for Geirmund did not want to hear what he knew she would soon tell him, and he knew she did not want to say it. He felt as though he stood at the threshold of some doorway of fate, and once he stepped through it, he could not go back.

  She felt thin in his arms, and her hair still smelled of the smoke from the pyre. “Father?” he finally whispered, ready to know.

  She squeezed him more tightly, saying nothing for several moments, and then she pulled away, her eyes red but dry, as if she had cried until no more tears would come.

  “All colour is dimmed,” she said and touched a silver brooch she wore. “I feel my heart in my chest, but I cannot make sense of it. How can a heart that has ended keep beating?”

  “I am sorry I wasn’t there,” Geirmund said, thinking of his father on the battlefield, alone, surrounded by Saxons, in need of another sword, and how Geirmund would have raced to his side, but it felt as if he was trying to outrun a wave breaking inside him. “If I had been there, perhaps I could have–”

  She covered his lips. “Silence, my son. There is nothing you could have done. It was fate.”

  He pulled her hand away from his mouth. “I asked him to fight Wessex with me. We stood together by the river in Jorvik, and I asked him–”

  “It was fate,” she said. “The coward believes he will live forever if he avoids the battle, but there can be no truce with death. Is that not what Bragi always said? Be proud that your father met his death with courage and honour.”

  In that moment Geirmund felt himself step over the threshold in which he had been lingering, into a darkened hall with an empty high seat, and the emptiness in that seat robbed him of breath. Little else had changed, and yet everything around him had become unfamiliar, as if it only made sense against the thing he had lost.

  “Wait here,” his mother said, and she stooped to pass through the low doorway into the hut. A few moments later, she came back out carrying a seax. “This was your father’s. Something told me to hold it back from the fire, and now I see that you lost a weapon.”

  She gave him the seax, which had a grip made of polished antler and a blade of Frakkland steel, and it so pleased Geirmund’s hand when he held it that he knew it also pleased the gods. It seemed to be of the same length and width as John’s seax that he had given to the völva to burn, and he found that it fitted into the empty sheath he still wore at his belt, as if they had been made together.

 
“The seer in Ravensthorpe told me I would find another,” he said.

  “Kingdoms will pass,” his mother said. “Wealth will pass. Warriors will pass. I will pass, and you will pass. One thing alone will never pass, and that is the honour and fame of one who has earned it. Always remember that you are a son of Hjörr.”

  “And a son of Ljufvina,” he said.

  She smiled, something it seemed she had not done in days. “I am proud to be your mother, and I know your father was proud of you also. He wanted Wessex for you. And now it is won.”

  Geirmund froze, unsure of how to speak the truth without taking away some of his mother’s comfort. “It is almost won,” he said, and when she questioned his meaning, he explained what he had learned of Ælfred. His mother agreed with him that the Saxon king could not be left in his fen-hold.

  “Have you told Guthrum?” she asked.

  “I have not seen him yet.”

  “Go now,” she said. “Ælfred must not be given time and freedom to plan his return. But choose your words with care. Guthrum is now a Dane of many minds, and you may not always know which one you speak to.”

  She pointed him towards a Christian temple sitting atop the village hill, and he left her to seek the king there, but on the way he met Eivor as she came down from the rise. He was glad to see her again, and they clasped hands in greeting, standing together in the temple’s shadow. She spoke briefly of her respect for his father, and her mourning for him, though it seemed she felt her sadness most strongly on behalf of Ljufvina, for which Geirmund was grateful. He knew his mother would need friends in the lonely days and years to come.

  “I hear Guthrum owes you a great debt, Eivor,” Geirmund said. “I do not think he could have won this battle without you.”

  “I am sorry you missed it, my friend.”

  “I missed a fight,” Geirmund said. “I have not missed the war.”

  She gave him a puzzled smile. “What does that mean?”

  “Wessex has not yet fallen.”