by Oskar Jensen
Without warning, the squirrel sprang right at his face, so that he reeled backwards; it landed on his shoulder, tiny talons digging into his flesh, drawing blood. The stone-eyed head leant in to his ear, teeth and words both rasping at the lobe. ‘The skald who won such a contest, could prove a worthy champion indeed.’
Leif steadied himself, fighting down the urge to fling the rodent from him. His stomach was still weak from the beheading of the mare. ‘You mean …’
‘A hero fit to stand up to our scream.’
And it screeched into his ear. Thud.
This time, it was Leif who fell. By the time he picked himself back up, dusting ferns and pine needles from his body, the squirrel was nowhere to be seen.
As the stones predicted, no spirits moved against Folkmar. Thyre was furious that her plan had failed, and railed at the priest, calling him a Nithing to his face. This was a deadly insult, enough to start a blood-feud between Danes, but Folkmar only turned a fat smile upon her, saying, ‘My apologies; I am not comprehending your language.’
‘Perhaps that’s half the problem; how can words work on a man who doesn’t understand?’ Leif said to Astrid. ‘It’s no surprise that runes don’t work on Folkmar, if he has no idea what they mean.’
‘Sucks for you,’ said Astrid, ‘since words are the one thing you’re any good at …’ She had not forgotten how he had fainted in the grove.
He gave her what he hoped was a disdainful look. She gave him what she knew was a well-aimed kick, and then he grabbed for her leg and they were rolling around on the benches …
And a hacking, spluttering cough came from the king’s bedchamber, and they sat up, saddened.
‘It’s an age since I tended Father,’ said Astrid. They had almost forgotten the king, swept up in events that moved too fast for a failing old man. ‘I know – I’ll get my harp …’
TWENTY-THREE
Astrid entered her father’s room. It felt all wrong. This chamber had once been the centre of her world – an almost sacred place where she rarely dared venture – and from it came power, and law, and gold. But now …
It’s the smell, she decided. The room had always been dark, and still, and close. But never before had there been this – what was it? – it was familiar …
Garm. The bedroom smelt like the breath of the Hel-hound. Rank and rotting. A groan came from the bed.
‘Father?’ she said. ‘King Gorm?’
‘Astrid?’
She went to the bed – vast and oaken with curling dragons’-head scrolls at the ends. The silken sheets were rumpled in disorder. Somewhere in their centre, Gorm the Old was trying to sit up.
Astrid hastened to help him, supporting his back and wasted shoulders. It was far too easy. A man of his height should have been much heavier, and Astrid was ashamed.
‘My cup,’ he croaked, one spindly arm fumbling at the bedside. Her father’s wrist was thin, liver-spotted.
She found the cup – small, silver, etched with ribboned beasts – and raised it to his lips. Something clanked in the murky liquid as he drank. Returning it to the chest, Astrid saw a wolf’s claw, clinking in the cup. It was an old remedy; the strength of the animal was meant to be passed on to the drinker.
Leif will be pleased, she thought. My father’s clearly no Christian.
Some of the medicine dribbled down his iron beard and she mopped at it with her sleeve, eyes averted.
‘You seem ever more like your mother,’ said Gorm, and Astrid blushed.
‘Stronger,’ he went on. ‘More free. More distant.’
She could have cried then.
‘Would you like me to play for you, Father?’
He nodded. ‘One of the old tunes, Astrid. Make it bright with the hunt and the battle.’
She sat across from him, and took up her harp. A few trial runs and she was away, amid rich chords, the wild deep leaping of the low notes and the high giddy melody that spoke of clashing swords and dancing feet. A series of harsh strums on the off-beat and she was there, in the fire and the fury, and Gorm was there too, his clouded white eyes fixed on the direction of the music, stiff old fingers beating almost in time to the tune.
At last she paused, worried she had taken him too far.
‘Play on, shield maiden,’ he said. ‘I have your back.’ He grinned a wolf’s grin, and she went on. His whole upper body was swaying with the rhythm now, and when at last she laid down the harp, fingers smarting, there were tears on both their faces.
‘Come, daughter,’ he said, and held out an arm.
Astrid crept into his embrace, really worried now. He had not held her like this in years.
‘Daughter, I stand so near Valhalla’s doors that I can hear the shouts and smell the roasting-spit. But even now, with my face turned to Odin’s kingdom, I sense the troubles of my own at my back.’
She burrowed closer into his side, nose scrunched bravely against the smell of him.
‘At such a time, I would have my heir near me, and I know Thyre feels Knut’s lack sorely. He’s a worthy son, and if he wrests the rule of Dublin from Olaf the Sure-Shod, why, his fame might even surpass mine! A father could not wish for more …’
‘… But?’ said Astrid.
‘But for all that, it sometimes seems a pity that he, not Haralt, is to sit in my throne after me.’
‘Haralt?’ Oh, the things she could tell him about her brother!
Gorm chuckled, though the effort cost him much. ‘He’s not much loved by his own blood, is he? But then, the flock does not love the dog. Haralt may not have the beard of a true king, but he has the head, and I think the heart too.’
Gorm’s voice was slow and rasping. ‘All this fussing over faith – I think he knows what he’s about. It might be well for this land if its next king rules with the Cross as well as the sword.’
‘But if Haralt was allowed, he’d wipe out all the old ways!’
‘I’ve been listening to his talk with the priest. He is ambitious. Haralt wants to build bridges – not just with Germany, but real bridges of wood, even of stone. He talks of forts … This land wants taming, Astrid; it’s too wild, too free. Your mother’s people across the water, in the border lands, they’re little better than wolves, and it’ll take more than a few berserkers to keep them in order. Odin knows I did some terrible things in my youth, but I’d do them again, and those who come after me may well have to, if they are to keep hold of my kingdom.’
‘Terrible things?’
‘Too terrible even for your bloodthirsty ears, Astrid. My point is, you may not love your brother – and I’d never ask you to like him – but don’t fight him. He has our family’s interests at heart. And nothing good comes of it when one’s children quarrel.’
Astrid’s mouth was a hard line.
Gorm sighed. ‘Try, anyway, just a little. And, Astrid, I’ve a second thing to tell you – a secret. Not even your mother must know.’
Gorm smiled his wolf’s head smile, and there was something cracked and crazy in it.
‘I’ve gone blind!’ he said.
TWENTY-FOUR
The summer died in indecision; autumn’s splendid rot set in. The world was streaked rust-red and gold, fruits and berries tumbling onto the long trestle tables. The harvest was brought in, the blindness of the king leaked out. Stubbled fields bled into browning forests. The nights drew cold. Folkmar’s waddle was becoming a swagger; Leif practised speeches for a flyting; no birds sang. Men walked in fear of what was to come, and what might not, and it was rumoured Gorm the Old would not last another winter.
Thyre’s face was a storm cloud in these days, as more and more of the Thor’s hammers vanished from around necks, melted into coinage or even recast into true crosses. Haralt sent for engineers from Hamburg, to chart the marshes where the trolls still mourned and to see about building a bridge there.
Astrid was not sleeping well, out in the stables. Both her parents falling apart; her favourite brother risking his life across the ocean
; the terror of Hellir, the gorge, and Folkmar’s wandering fingers – it was no surprise, she told herself, that she could imagine the sound of the angel, landing on the stable roof.
Soft wing beats. A creak of timbers. Slow pacing.
She turned over, trying to ignore the sounds her over-wrought mind must be imagining.
Another creak; a scatter of fallen dust and splinters across her upturned cheek.
After all, it made no sense for the angel to be here: it was on a mission to kill pagan creatures, things of magic. And there was nothing of that sort here.
A jolt. A thud. Except for …
A sudden flurry of sounds, a high skittering above; three jarring strides and a crash of rent wood. Above it all, the thinnest, smallest squeal and then a deafening shriek of triumph.
Except for …
‘Nisse!’ she screamed. In a blur of terror Astrid leapt from the bed, groped for flint and tinder, struck a light. The din of the departing angel as it rose up from the roof was all around her. And at the foot of the bed lay a tiny, childlike figure, crumpled from its fall. It was the first time she’d actually seen him.
There was so little blood.
Astrid buried Nisse in the stable, the packed, hard earth moistened by her tears. If the tipping point is coming, she thought, and all this will be ended, then let it come soon. Though, had she drunk from Mimir’s well of wisdom and seen what was to come, she would have wished those words unsaid.
One morning, Gorm stirred from his bed, and set the whole of Jelling scurrying.
‘What are the men about?’ Astrid asked her mother, relieved that something was happening.
‘They are set to start reshaping the mound,’ said Thyre, and her words were as rocks on a stormy headland.
‘What, the old burial mound beside the Yelling Stones? But why?’
And then Astrid bit her lip, afraid of the answer.
‘Your father … Your father’s thoughts have turned to the hereafter,’ said Thyre. She hid her face for a moment. ‘At least we need not fear his following Christ! Gorm the Old will go to his grave Odin’s man.’ And then she stalked off, overcome.
Outside, a gale whipped men’s cloaks and hair about their faces, and made it hard to see. Shielding her eyes, Astrid bent into the winter wind and ran out to the stones. Beyond them she saw her father, wrapped in wolf skins, supported on either side, and gesturing here and there to warriors-turned-workmen. They brought shovel and adze, and felled trees in the forest, and all the time King Gorm stood erect in the wind, grey and grim as a standing stone himself, and, blind though he was, directed the digging of his own grave.
All the villages for days’ travel around sent men to help with the mound’s enlargement – it was not as if they had a choice. Jarl Tofi, the man Knut had called a sissy, came in person with a score of workers from Baekke. He sat stone-faced at Thyre’s side, watching the digging and laying and turfing. Gorm was set on its being finished before the first snows fell.
And finished it was. As the first flurries came in from the west, wet and driving and sludgy white, they fell upon an immense and green-turfed mound, dwarfing the hall. Tools were packed and labourers ran home, to reach their firesides and families before the worst of the snow hit.
‘Perhaps now we can all forget this folly and start thinking about our family’s actual future?’ said Haralt, at dinner. ‘There is the question of Astrid’s marriage, for instance.’
Outside, a blizzard was growing. Haralt raised his voice above it. ‘I have been having thoughts on that matter. It is in our best interests to strengthen Danish ties to the Saxon court. At this very table, we have a representative –’
Astrid and Thyre both opened their mouths to shout Haralt down. Then they closed them again. Haralt too tailed off. Everyone was suddenly silent.
Someone was hammering on the doors of the hall.
‘Who comes calling at such a time, and in this weather?’ Haralt cried.
‘Oh for Thor’s sake, someone open the accursed door,’ snapped Thyre.
Two men leapt to the task. As soon as the massive oak bar was raised, the gale flung the doors apart, knocking the men to the ground.
All eyes peered against the swirling white. All faces felt the chill. The hall fires guttered and dwindled with the blast. And in came a man.
He was broken, and bent, and swaddled up against the snow with moulting piles of bloodied bearskin. His face was a web of scars. His eyes were sunken pits, and his hands … his hands …
‘Weland!’ cried Thyre. Everyone rose to get a better look at the one-time warrior.
‘What? Our smith returned?!’
‘Come in, Weland, come and get warm!’
‘What brings you back alone, man?’
‘How fares Knut?’
But Thyre stood in silence, both hands before her mouth. She eyed Weland as if he were a ghost.
Slowly, everyone in the hall realised that something was very, very wrong. The cries of greeting ebbed away into awful silence. No one could move; no one save that shambling figure, edging up towards the stricken queen.
And in that silence, another door banged behind her, and Gorm the Old fumbled his way from his bed to stand before his throne. He raised two trembling, skeleton’s hands above his head. And he stared, unseeing, straight at Weland, and he cried out, in a voice like coffins toppling open, ‘My son Knut is dead!’
TWENTY-FIVE
Only two people were still. Weland, sunk to the floor, the centre of a swarm of people, all asking the same question. And Thyre, frozen on the dais, hands still before her mouth.
Below her, all was chaos. Half the hall went to Weland; the other half surged around the blind king. Hands stretched before him, Gorm shuffled from the high table down to the hall floor. He spoke sharply to the first men to reach him, who bowed, backed away, and then darted past Thyre into the king’s bedchamber.
Astrid ran towards Weland. She could hear snatches of his speech amid the din. ‘Dublin –’ ‘ambush –’ ‘an arrow –’ ‘dead –’ ‘no other survivors.’
A wolf had hold of her heart, and was gnawing it to pieces.
Gorm meanwhile never paused, treading a straight path towards the doors, which still swung open, unheeded. ‘Stand back,’ he called. ‘I am still your king.’ A wary circle formed around him.
He never glanced at the prone Weland, never turned his head, even to acknowledge the return of the runners. One bore his sword – the Toledo blade Leif had given him – and placed it in the king’s right hand. Somehow he took its weight. The other carried, hooded on his arm, the king’s eagle, Hreggskornir; it hopped to the king’s left shoulder. Two more men walked behind, and between them was a chest – ornate, and heavy, to judge from the bowing of their backs.
Gorm’s grey gown billowed behind him in the face of the winter blast. His beard whipped up and the eagle spread its wings. Someone had slipped its hood and now it raised its beak, cawing in defiance of any who dared approach. There were three stuttering fires lit down the length of that great hall, and as the awful figure passed, each in turn went out.
One. Two. Three. Snuffed like candles when Gorm the Old went by.
‘Have the doors closed,’ a white-faced Haralt muttered to Arinbjorn. ‘This has gone far enough.’
The old Norwegian sent four men racing for the doors, but the wind rose as they bent to their task, huge icy fists dashing them back against the walls.
As Gorm approached the winds parted, closing on his tall grey frame and slamming the doors shut behind him. Now men ran to wrestle them open again, hauling the massive panels back and rushing out into the racing white night, after the blind king. Leif and Astrid slipped between them. Somewhere, a horse whinnied.
Incredibly, Gorm was mounted, sword raised in his right hand, eagle on his left wrist, the reins, let loose, tugged about by the wind. Behind him in the saddle was lashed the heavy chest. The horse was huge, and grey, and old, and their backs were turned to the milling cro
wd.
‘Hear me, old friends,’ cried the king. Somehow they knew the words were meant, not for any person there, but for the stones themselves.
‘All my life, I have offered you the blood of my sacrifices. In living, you have made me great! Do not fail me in my death!’
Without a glance, the king touched his heels to the horse’s flanks, and the beast cantered straight between the Yelling Stones.
An almighty thunderclap sprawled the watchers, and the horse reared up at the stones’ centre. Lightning flashed from between the stones; shot out to strike the newly raised earthwork.
For a moment, all were blinded, deafened, struck by the force of the lightning crack.
And then it was quiet, and the wind died, and the horse trotted calmly north. The great mound opened before the rider. The king rode into the mound, and the mound closed upon him.
People picked themselves up. Gorm the Old had gone. He had ridden into his own grave, and it had welcomed him.
Astrid’s eyes, impossibly, were dry as she fled the crowd and ran back into the horrid smoky press of the hall. Scrabbling about on the bench, she drew her harp from a bundle of cloaks.
‘Play on, shield maiden,’ her father had said. ‘I have your back.’
‘I’ll never play again,’ she said, and flung it in the fire. The strings snapped and the bridge cracked; greedy flames ate up the wood.
Leif looked from her, to the fire, to the dais where Thyre still stood, unmoving. And what was he meant to do now?
Night, and the gale returned with the dark. Ice lashed at Leif’s exposed cheeks as, in desperation, he strode out to the stones. ‘What would you have me do, you useless rocks?’ he shouted, words whipped away into the black.
Not even an echo greeted his words.
For a moment, he stood before them, thwarted. And then he stepped forward.
A monstrous adder reared up in his path, uncoiling from the foot of the nearest stone. It rose as high as his waist, jaws agape, and Leif staggered back. Its eyes were dead grey stone, and now it swayed before him, fixing those eyes on his own.