The Unbroken Line of the Moon

by Hildebrandt, Johanne

  Sweyn nodded, glad to be distracted. Two young ladies batted their eyelashes at him and whispered to each other, their cheeks blushing.

  “Did you kill very many enemies?” the boy asked.

  Sweyn nodded again.

  “How many?”

  “That’s enough, Ragnvald,” an older man said, pushing the boy along. “Excuse the boy. His head is filled with stories about you men. It makes it hard for him to hush up and mind his manners.”

  “I’m going to be a Jómsvíking when I grow up!” Ragnvald cried and then ran away when the man shook his fist.

  “We’ve heard worse,” said Sweyn, smiling at the boy, who stopped defiantly a few arm lengths away.

  “I bet you have,” the man said, nodding somberly. “Allow me to offer you some of Lejre’s best mead. It would be an honor to serve Jómsvíkings.”

  He gestured to a wench, who came running over from a barrel of mead with a full pitcher and some cups that he eagerly began to fill for the warriors.

  Sweyn accepted a cup and drank thirstily before passing it on.

  “You’re always welcome to come drink here. I’m Sten Halte. I sell the best mead in the kingdom of the Danes, served by the most beautiful wenches.”

  There were benches around the barrel, where several men were already drinking even though the day was still young.

  Away on the wharf the slaves were being unloaded. Women and children stood close together, while the men stood on their own with their hands tied. They looked around with vacant eyes. Sweyn turned away, disgusted by their weakness.

  The king’s jarl and his men came riding into the square from the far end of the market. The sight of the fat jarl rocking himself down off his poor horse and waddling over to Palna silenced the Jómsvíkings.

  “I come with the king’s greetings. He wishes the Jómsvíkings a warm welcome to Lejre.”

  No one totally believed the words, but Palna put his hand on his heart anyway in a gesture of respect.

  “You have the king’s permission to pitch camp on the battlefield,” the jarl continued. His cheeks jiggled as he spoke, and sweat ran down his forehead even though the day wasn’t especially hot. “King Harald also summons you and your people to the hall this evening, Jarl Palna.”

  Sweyn squeezed his sword hilt tightly. So, he was going to face his birth father before the day was out.

  “We are honored and will be there,” Palna replied.

  The jarl wiped the sweat from his brow and anxiously looked at the warriors who surrounded him.

  “The king looks forward to hearing the news from the west and receiving his gifts.”

  “I can imagine,” Palna replied guardedly and turned to his ship captains. “You heard that, men.”

  People immediately started passing on the information, and Sweyn went to fetch their belongings. There was no turning back now. If luck weren’t with him, he’d be dead before dawn.

  O Freya, Mistress of Folkvang, speak to me. Why did you send me the dream with the Jómsvíking? What is your will?

  Sigrid looked at the sellers holding up their wares outside their shops. What if the warning dream about Sweyn had been sent by the evil seeress Ragna or other forces of darkness? If that was the case, Sigrid would have to make certain that hag burned on a bonfire and her remains were cursed so she could never enter the halls of Niflheim. Or were these Christians filling her head with phantoms? Sigrid shivered.

  I don’t understand what’s happening.

  It couldn’t be Vanadís’s will that she marry a young Jómsvíking without any land or farm or standing.

  “Pick anything you want,” Toste said proudly, gesturing toward the swaths of the finest linen, which Jorun and Alfhild were already fingering.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said to a dark-skinned man who held a pearl necklace up to her.

  Premonitions and seeresses, dísir and battles. Her head ached, and sweat ran down her back. Sigrid stepped aside to get out of the way of some goats, and her shoe landed in a mound of manure. Alfhild started giggling.

  “You be quiet,” she scolded her kinswoman, who stopped immediately. “Father, I’m tired and need to rest.”

  She saw disappointment in Toste’s eyes, but she wasn’t up to flitting from shop to shop like a butterfly. Not now, when her world had just collapsed.

  “You’re tired, I understand,” he said and then lit up in a broad smile. “Only the best for my queen.”

  “It’s crowded. There are a lot of people here for the summer festival, so it may be hard to find lodgings,” said the servant who showed them the way to one of the longhouses surrounding the royal hall.

  He was an older man in a greenish-yellow shirt and white breeches, with lips pursed inside his black beard. He had tired eyes, as if he were weary of guests arriving and disrupting his important duties.

  “Is it King Harald’s choice not to honor the queen of Svealand with suitable quarters, or is it your own?” Toste asked, raising an eyebrow.

  The servant looked worriedly at Sigrid and the rest of the group before clearing his throat and saying, “If you can wait, I’ll see if I can find you something more suitable.”

  Then he hurried off.

  “Soon you’ll have the quiet you need,” Toste said.

  Sigrid sank onto a bench and looked gloomily at the Danish king’s royal hall. Four of her father’s great halls would have fit in that one longhouse. Several beautifully ornate doors depicted brightly colored images from events she was not familiar with. The dark roof featured variously colored wood tiles forming a coiling pattern, and on the ridge at the very top there were gleaming black dragon heads, so big that they made the ones atop her father’s hall look tiny. There were several longhouses surrounding the courtyard, in which magnificently dressed foreigners and warriors hurried back and forth.

  She was going to marry a man who was just as powerful as the Danish king. Soon she would rule over the kind of splendor they had here. Could she marry Erik if that wasn’t Freya’s will? Could she refuse a king if peace was at stake? A glowing band of pain tightened around her head, so tight she couldn’t think.

  “See our ancestors’ burial mounds,” Toste said to cheer her up. “Here lie Harald Wartooth, the last of the kings, and Skjold, Rolf Krake, Frode Fredegod, and the rest of the dynasty’s forefathers. They fought giants, trolls, dragons, and monsters to conquer this land. Their courage and sacrifice made our family strong.”

  Father nodded to himself as he contemplated their preeminence.

  “That’s great,” Sigrid said in a monotone.

  “I wish I’d lived back then and killed a dragon,” Ulf said. “Like when Beowulf brought down Grendel.”

  Toste laughed, stuffing his thumbs into his belt, and replied, “Beowulf was a braggart, widely known for his exaggerations. Grendel was just a dragonling and they’re easy to kill. If he’d met the mother, it would have been another matter. You should fear the females the most.”

  Sigrid turned away from the men, who started bragging about various females that had been killed and how dangerous they’d been. Two men in long gray cassocks with shaved heads walked across the courtyard. They went into a wooden building standing on a little hill between two halls. It wasn’t until Sigrid saw the cross on the door that she realized it was a house for the Christian god.

  She shuddered uneasily.

  May the mistress of the valkyries burn them all to ash.

  Their very presence was sacrilege. The All-Father himself had lived here before he traveled on, and the descendants of his sons lay buried here in their barrows. She hunched over on the bench, her head aching and burning.

  Help me, Vanadís. I wander alone in the dark. Show me the way.

  A woman in a long brown frock walked toward them, her pace so rapid that her blond assistant could barely keep up.

  “Hail, Skagul Toste,” she said. “I’m still waiting for the gift you so generously promised me when I tended your wounds.”

  Lon
g gray braids swung around the woman’s face, which was neither old nor young. She didn’t wear a seeress’s blue cloak, but Sigrid saw the cat pelt on her belt. That was the sign of Freya, and she was certainly a priestess of the old ways, even if she didn’t show it openly.

  Sigrid stood and inhaled deeply with relief.

  Thank you.

  She should never have doubted.

  “O Revered One, I seek your council,” Sigrid said.

  The seeress didn’t listen to her, just kept walking toward Toste, who immediately sank down before her in respect.

  “Forgive my impudence, Beyla. Before the day is over I will repay you amply for your kind deed.”

  The seeress nodded in approval at Toste’s fawning.

  “You will find me in Palna’s camp,” she said and turned toward his daughter.

  She peered at Sigrid with a focused squint. Deep wrinkles formed around her gray wolf eyes.

  Sigrid had met two seeresses in her life: the kindly Helgur, who visited their estate with her retinue of priestesses every year to prophesy about coming times and love troubles, and the malevolent Ragna in the Alva Woods. This Beyla didn’t resemble either of them.

  “I’m looking for the gods’ advice,” Sigrid said, receiving a stern glance and a disparaging snort in response.

  “Then you should look for it where the old ways are not forbidden,” Beyla retorted. She nodded slightly to Toste and then walked quickly away.

  Red specks danced before Sigrid’s eyes. That seeress couldn’t just leave her! Sigrid needed help. Otherwise she was lost.

  “I beg you. Whatever you request, you shall have it,” Sigrid called after Beyla, but the woman didn’t even turn around.

  Beyla’s blond assistant remained nearby.

  “Beyla can’t help you,” she tittered, looking up at Sigrid in delight.

  “Get out of here,” Toste yelled, taking a step toward the girl to drive her away.

  But the blonde shook her head and told Sigrid, “I can’t leave you, not ever, my lovely.”

  Sigrid looked uncomfortably at the insane girl. Her curly hair hung over her face, uncombed, her eyes were vacant of life, and drool trickled from the corner of her mouth.

  “Move along,” Toste ordered.

  “Calm down, I’m here now,” she whispered.

  With a grunt she grabbed Sigrid’s arm and pulled her sleeve up until her tattoo was visible, as if she’d known it was there all along. And then she kissed it. As she did so, she screamed, making a choking noise that sounded like it came from the throat of a dying animal. Her eyes rolled back. Then she swayed before collapsing to the ground.

  Sigrid yanked her arm back and pulled her sleeve back down. She took a step back, her heart pounding in her chest.

  “What are you doing?” Beyla said, having suddenly returned and taken the girl’s arm and helped her to her feet. “Get yourself together now, Emma,” she commanded with gruff tenderness.

  Surprise and happiness came over the blond girl’s face as she stood up, drowsily watching Sigrid.

  “I saw her pain, so I took it,” the girl said with a giggle.

  Sigrid shivered uncomfortably at the girl’s insanity. But when she rubbed her hand over her forehead she realized her headache was gone, as if it had never been there.

  She gasped. “What did you do to me?”

  All she received in response was a lunatic smile. Beyla put her arm around the girl, who laughed like a drunk, and then scrutinized Sigrid closely as if for the first time.

  “Maybe we should talk, after all,” Beyla told Sigrid. “Come to me tomorrow when the sun is at its zenith. Then you will get the answers you seek.”

  “You are a seeress!” Sigrid said. So she had been right, in the end.

  “Lower your voice.” Beyla’s whisper was like the lash of a whip. She took a firm hold of her protégée and led her away from the courtyard. Perplexed, Sigrid watched them until they disappeared behind the thatched roof of a longhouse.

  Tomorrow she would finally get her answers. Then the gods would reveal to her what was in the tapestry.

  Thank you, Revered One, for this blessing.

  Beyla held Emma firmly as she left Sigrid, supporting her unsteady legs with her staff.

  “What did you see?” the seeress asked when they were away from listening ears, walking toward the field where the Jómsvíkings were pitching their camp.

  “I saw what is to come,” Emma said hoarsely and smiled sadly.

  Words could not describe how beautiful it had been to see the glowing grains of sand floating in Sigrid’s womb. They spun like a spiral slowly through time while everything that once was returned again in a never-ending repetition of the world’s creation and destruction. Around that there was a swarm of sparks that glittered and then died. People’s lives were brief instants in the eternal cycle of rebirth.

  When Emma had grazed Sigrid’s wrist, she had seen right into the Norns’ weaving: countless shimmering life threads that ran in and out of each other—meetings, births, and deaths—down into the afterworld and up again as a new life. Everything was connected. No person was ever alone, whether in this life or the next. Only then did Emma understand why Kára had chosen her and why she was still alive. The relief and fear melted together into a roaring boom within her.

  “I saw the future, and Sigrid carries it in her womb,” Emma announced.

  Beyla eyed her sharply, waiting impatiently for her to go on.

  “She’s going to bear a child. If he is not born, the tapestry will tear, and our world will break up into Ragnarök.”

  Emma shivered when she realized how frail the threads forming their world were.

  If the tapestry tore, the people of the North would suffer horrors. Hoarfrost giants would be set free, and Fimbulwinter would spread with crop failures and death. Beyond the winter waited plagues that would wipe out almost everyone. Wars would rage, brother against brother, and there would be slaughter in the name of the cross. Only this unborn, the strongest of kings, could hold the tapestry together by creating harmony where there was only chaos.

  Beyla was deathly pale.

  “What else?” she demanded.

  Emma smiled sadly at the memory of the woman screaming in pain and mortal fear.

  “I will be sacrificed so that the child might live.”

  This was it. Sweyn clenched his jaws so hard they ached and took a deep breath. His whole life had led up to this moment. He put his hand on his sword hilt and felt the calmness as his fingers closed around it. His brothers-in-arms stood by his side. He would prevail, and with the right of might he would take what was his.

  Åke gave him a look of encouragement, and the ship captains all looked confident. Even Ingolf could be trusted at a time like this.

  “As one?” he asked.

  “As one!” they responded.

  Palna turned toward the ornate doors of the royal hall and reminded them, “Be on your guard, men. In this hall we are on thin ice. As Odin says, At every doorway before proceeding, study the shelter, look around the shelter, because one never knows where a foe waits sitting within.”

  “I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time,” Sweyn said with a grim smile.

  “Well, let’s find out what kind of mood the king’s in today,” Palna replied, head held high, and walked toward the doors.

  Two servants opened the doors wide so the nine Jómsvíkings could walk right into King Harald Bluetooth’s royal hall.

  People said the royal hall back in Jelling was the biggest ever built by a Scandinavian, but the torchlit hall they stepped into now in Lejre was plenty grand with its high roof and walls covered in tapestries and shields.

  The people inside were dressed in showy, expensive clothes, and they stopped talking when they saw the Jómsvíkings walk in. There were many warriors in attendance, some from King Harald’s hird. Storbjörn the Strong, the Jarl of Trelleborg, was there as well as several other chieftains along with their reti
nues. Other men looked weaker and were draped in silver chains. They were no threat. The Obotrites stood off on their own, as did other groups of foreigners.

  The crowd parted, letting the Jómsvíkings through to the king. King Harald sat on a carved throne gleaming with silver and gemstones at the very back of the room. On a post on either side there were pictures of his and the Jellings’ great achievements.

  King Harald Bluetooth was both older and shorter than Sweyn had expected. His hair was thinning, and his beard was braided into a thin dark-red braid. His face was a sickly gray hue, like you see in the dying, and was plump but wrinkled with age. Golden threads were woven into his cloak, and red silk stretched over his swelling belly.

  An elderly woman with her hair up in an elaborate hairdo sat in the smaller chair next to him. That must be Queen Tova, daughter of Prince Mistivoi of the Wends. Next to her sat a dark-haired, frail young maiden, probably their daughter Thyre.

  On the king’s other side sat three men dressed as courtiers in elegant clothes. Two of them were Sweyn’s age. If they were his half brothers Erik and Haakon, the third young man might be Torgny, the youngest of Harald’s sons.

  The Jómsvíkings stopped in front of the king’s throne. They closed their fists, placed them over their hearts, and bowed their heads, the sign that they belonged to Harald and offered him their respect. Silently they waited for the king to speak.

  “Greetings, Jarl Palna, strong arm of the Danes, chief of Jómsborg,” Harald finally said.

  He moved on his throne, with difficulty, as if both his back and his legs ached. Sweyn’s heart thudded heavily in his chest as his hatred gave him strength. The old man, swollen there on his throne, fat and putrefied, was an embarrassment and an abomination.

  The difference between Harald and the strong, scarred Palna couldn’t be greater.

  “It’s good to see you again, my friend,” King Harald said, and as he spoke his blue front teeth were visible. They had been filed to points and dyed to show that he was the greatest of warriors. “I’ve heard your journey was successful and that you bring news.”