by Anthology
We sat very still. I signed myself with the Hammer and took a long pull from my horn. One of the maids whimpered, and Ragnhild whispered so fiercely I could hear:
“Be still. The poor fellow’s out of his head. There’s no harm in him.”
I thought she was right, unless maybe in the last part. The gods can speak through a madman, and the gods are not always to be trusted. Or he could turn berserker, or he could be under a heavy curse that would also touch us.
He slumped, gazing before him. I caught a few fleas and cracked them while I pondered. Gerald noticed and asked with some horror if we had many fleas here.
“Why, of course,” said Thorgunna. “Have you none?”
“No.” He smiled crookedly. “Not yet.”
“Ah,” she sighed, “then you must be sick.”
She was a level-headed girl. I saw her thought, and so did Ragnhild and Helgi.
Clearly, a man so sick that he had no fleas could be expected to rave. We might still fret about whether we could catch the illness, but I deemed this unlikely; his woe was in the head, maybe from a blow he had taken. In any case, the matter was come down to earth now, something we could deal with.
I being a godi, a chief who holds sacrifices, it behooved me not to turn a stranger out.
Moreover, if he could fetch in many of those fire-kindling sticks, a profitable trade might be built up. So I said Gerald should go to rest. He protested, but we manhandled him into the shut-bed, and there he lay tired and was soon asleep. Thorgunna said she would take care of him.
The next eventide I meant to sacrifice a horse, both because of the timber we had found and to take away any curse that might be on Gerald. Furthermore, the beast I picked was old and useless, and we were short of fresh meat. Gerald had spent the morning lounging moodily around the garth, but when I came in at noon to eat I found him and my daughter laughing.
“You seem to be on the road to health,” I said.
“Oh yes. It . . . could be worse for me.” He sat down at my side as the carles set up the trestle table and the maids brought in the food. “I was ever much taken with the age of the vikings, and I have some skills.”
“Well,” I said, “if you have no home, we can keep you here for a while.”
“I can work,” he said eagerly. “I’ll be worth my pay.”
Now I knew he was from afar, because what chief would work on any land but his own, and for hire at that? Yet he had the easy manner of the high-born, and had clearly eaten well throughout his life. I overlooked that he had made me no gifts; after all, he was shipwrecked.
“Maybe you can get passage back to your United States,” said Helgi. “We could hire a ship. I’m fain to see that realm.”
“No,” said Gerald bleakly. “There is no such place. Not yet.”
“So you still hold to that idea you came from tomorrow?” grunted Sigurd. “Crazy notion. Pass the pork.”
“I do,” said Gerald. Calm had come upon him. “And I can prove it.”
“I don’t see how you speak our tongue, if you hail from so far away,” I said. I would not call a man a liar to his face, unless we were swapping friendly brags, but—
“They speak otherwise in my land and time,” he said, “but it happens that in Iceland the tongue changed little since the old days, and because my work had me often talking with the folk, I learned it when I came here.”
“If you are a Christian,” I said, “you must bear with us while we sacrifice tonight.”
“I’ve naught against that,” he said. “I fear I never was a very good Christian. I’d like to watch. How is it done?”
I told him how I would smite the horse with a hammer before the god, and cut its throat, and sprinkle the blood about with willow twigs; thereafter we would butcher the carcass and feast. He said hastily:
“Here’s my chance to prove what I am. I have a weapon that will kill the horse with, with a flash of lightning.”
“What is it?” I wondered. We crowded around while he took the metal club out of its sheath and showed it to us. I had my doubts; it looked well enough for hitting a man, I reckoned, but had no edge, though a wondrously skillful smith had forged it. “Well, we can try,” I said. You have seen how on Iceland we are less concerned to follow the rites exactly than they are in the older countries.
Gerald showed us what else he had in his pockets. There were some coins of remarkable roundness and sharpness, though neither gold nor true silver; a tiny key; a stick with lead in it for writing; a flat purse holding many bits of marked paper. When he told us gravely that some of this paper was money, Thorgunna herself had to laugh. Best was a knife whose blade folded into the handle. When he saw me admiring that, he gave it to me, which was well done for a shipwrecked man. I said I would give him clothes and a good ax, as well as lodging for as long as needful.
No, I don’t have the knife now. You shall hear why. It’s a pity, for that was a good knife, though rather small.
“What were you ere the war arrow went out in your land?” asked Helgi. “A merchant?”
“No,” said Gerald. “I was an . . . endjinur . . . that is, I was learning how to be one. A man who builds things, bridges and roads and tools . . . more than just an artisan. So I think my knowledge could be of great value here.” I saw a fever in his eyes. “Yes, give me time and I’ll be a king.”
“We have no king on Iceland,” I grunted. “Our forefathers came hither to get away from kings. Now we meet at the Things to try suits and pass new laws, but each man must get his own redress as best he can.”
“But suppose the one in the wrong won’t yield?” he asked.
“Then there can be a fine feud,” said Helgi, and went on to relate some of the killings in past years. Gerald looked unhappy and fingered his gun. That is what he called his fire-spitting club. He tried to rally himself with a joke about now, at last, being free to call it a gun instead of something else. That disquieted me, smacked of witchcraft, so to change the talk I told Helgi to stop his chattering of manslaughter as if it were sport.
With law shall the land be built.
“Your clothing is rich,” said Thorgunna softly. “Your folk must own broad acres at home.”
“No,” he said, “our . . . our king gives each man in the host clothes like these. As for my family, we owned no farm, we rented our home in a building where many other families also dwelt.”
I am not purse-proud, but it seemed to me he had not been honest, a landless man sharing my high seat like a chief. Thorgunna covered my huffiness by saying, “You will gain a farm later.”
After sunset we went out to the shrine. The carles had built a fire before it, and as I opened the door the wooden Odin appeared to leap forth. My house has long invoked him above the others. Gerald muttered to my daughter that it was a clumsy bit of carving, and since my father had made it I was still more angry with him. Some folks have no understanding of the fine arts.
Nevertheless, I let him help me lead the horse forth to the altar stone. I took the blood bowl in my hands and said he could now slay the beast if he would. He drew his gun, put the end behind the horse’s ear, and squeezed. We heard a crack, and the beast jerked and dropped with a hole blown through its skull, wasting the brains. A clumsy weapon. I caught a whiff, sharp and bitter like that around a volcano. We all jumped, one of the women screamed, and Gerald looked happy. I gathered my wits and finished the rest of the sacrifice as was right. Gerald did not like having blood sprinkled over him, but then he was a Christian. Nor would he take more than a little of the soup and flesh.
Afterward Helgi questioned him about the gun, and he said it could kill a man at bowshot distance but had no witchcraft in it, only use of some tricks we did not know.
Having heard of the Greek fire, I believed him. A gun could be useful in a fight, as indeed I was to learn, but it did not seem very practical—iron costing what it does, and months of forging needed for each one.
I fretted more about the man himself.
He said there were eight or nine thousand thousands of folk in his town, a burgh called New Jorvik or the like. I enjoy a good brag as well as the next man, but this was too much, and I told him gruffly to come along and help me get in some strayed cattle.
After a day scrambling around the hills I saw that Gerald could hardly tell a cow’s bow from her stern. We almost had the strays once, but he ran stupidly across their path and turned them, so the whole work was to do again. I asked him with strained courtesy if he could milk, shear, wield scythe or flail, and he said no, he had never lived on a farm.
“That’s a shame,” I remarked, “for everyone on Iceland does, unless he be outlawed.”
He flushed at my tone. “I can do enough else,” he answered. “Give me some tools and I’ll show you good metalwork.”
That brightened me, for truth to tell, none of our household was a gifted smith.
“That’s an honorable trade,” I said, “and you can be of great help. I have a broken sword and several bent spearheads to be mended, and it were no bad idea to shoe the horses.”
His admission that he did not know how to put on a shoe was not very dampening to me then.
We had returned home as we talked, and Thorgunna came angrily forward. “That’s no way to treat a guest, Father,” she said. “Making him work like a carle, indeed!”
Gerald smiled. “I’ll be glad to work,” he said. “I need a . . . a stake . . . something to start me afresh. Also, I want to repay a little of your kindness.”
Those words made me mild toward him, and I said it was not his fault they had different ways in the United States. On the morrow he could begin in the smithy, and I would pay him, yet he would be treated as an equal since craftsmen are valued. This earned him black looks from the housefolk.
That evening he entertained us well with stories of his home; true or not, they made good listening. However, he had no real polish, being unable to compose a line of verse.
They must be a raw and backward lot in the United States. He said his task in the war host had been to keep order among the troops. Helgi said this was unheard of, and he must be bold who durst offend so many men, but Gerald said folk obeyed him out of fear of the king. When he added that the term of a levy in the United States was two years, and that men could be called to war even in harvest time, I said he was well out of a country with so ruthless and powerful a lord.
“No,” he answered wistfully, “we are a free folk, who say what we please.”
“But it seems you may not do as you please,” said Helgi.
“Well,” Gerald said, “we may not murder a man just because he aggrieves us.”
“Not even if he has slain your own kin?” asked Helgi.
“No. It is for the . . . the king to take vengeance, on behalf of the whole folk whose peace has been broken.”
I chuckled. “Your yarns are cunningly wrought,” I said, “but there you’ve hit a snag.
How could the king so much as keep count of the slaughters, let alone avenge them?
Why, he’d not have time to beget an heir!”
Gerald could say no more for the laughter that followed.
The next day he went to the smithy, with a thrall to pump the bellows for him. I was gone that day and night, down to Reykjavik to dicker with Hjalmar Broadnose about some sheep. I invited him back for an overnight stay, and we rode into my steading with his son Ketill, a red-haired sulky youth of twenty winters who had been refused by Thorgunna.
I found Gerald sitting gloomily on a bench in the hall. He wore the clothes I had given him, his own having been spoilt by ash and sparks; what had he awaited, the fool? He talked in a low voice with my daughter.
“Well,” I said as I trod in, “how went the tasks?”
My man Grim snickered. “He ruined two spearheads, but we put out the fire he started ere the whole smithy burned.”
“How’s this?” I cried. “You said you were a smith.”
Gerald stood up, defiant. “I worked with different tools, and better ones, at home,” he replied. “You do it otherwise here.”
They told me he had built up the fire too hot; his hammer had struck everywhere but the place it should; he had wrecked the temper of the steel through not knowing when to quench it. Smithcraft takes years to learn, of course, but he might have owned to being not so much as an apprentice.
“Well,” I snapped, “what can you do, then, to earn your bread?” It irked me to be made a ninny of before Hjalmar and Ketill, whom I had told about the stranger.
“Odin alone knows,” said Grim. “I took him with me to ride after your goats, and never have I seen a worse horseman. I asked him if maybe he could spin or weave, and he said no.”
“That was no question to ask a man!” flared Thorgunna. “He should have slain you for it.”
“He should indeed,” laughed Grim. “But let me carry on the tale. I thought we would also repair your bridge over the foss. Well, he can barely handle a saw, but he nigh took his own foot off with the adze.”
“We don’t use those tools, I tell you!” Gerald doubled his fists and looked close to tears.
I motioned my guests to sit down. “I don’t suppose you can butcher or smoke a hog, either,” I said, “or salt a fish or turf a roof.”
“No.” I could hardly hear him.
“Well, then, man, whatever can you do?”
“I—” He could get no words out.
“You were a warrior,” said Thorgunna.
“Yes, that I was!” he said, his face kindling.
“Small use on Iceland when you have no other skills,” I grumbled, “but maybe, if you can get passage to the eastlands, some king will take you in his guard.” Myself I doubted it, for a guardsman needs manners that will do credit to his lord; but I had not the heart to say so.
Ketill Hjalmarsson had plainly not liked the way Thorgunna stood close to Gerald and spoke for him. Now he leered and said: “I might also doubt your skill in fighting.”
“That I have been trained for,” said Gerald grimly.
“Will you wrestle with me?” asked Ketill.
“Gladly!” spat Gerald.
Priest, what is a man to think? As I grow older, I find life to be less and less the good-and-evil, black-and-white thing you call it; we are each of us some hue of gray. This useless fellow, this spiritless lout who could be asked if he did women’s work and not lift ax, went out into the yard with Ketill Hjalmarsson and threw him three times running. He had a trick of grabbing the clothes as Ketill rushed him . . . I cried a stop when the youth was nearing murderous rage, praised them both, and filled the beer horns. But Ketill brooded sullen on the bench the whole evening.
Gerald said something about making a gun like his own, but bigger, a cannon he called it, which would sink ships and scatter hosts. He would need the help of smiths, and also various stuffs. Charcoal was easy, and sulfur could be found by the volcanoes, I suppose, but what is this saltpeter?
Too, being wary by now, I questioned him closely as to how he would make such a thing. Did he know just how to mix the powder? No, he admitted. What size must the gun be? When he told me—at least as long as a man—I laughed and asked him how a piece that size could be cast or bored, supposing we could scrape together so much iron.
This he did not know either.
“You haven’t the tools to make the tools to make the tools,” he said. I don’t understand what he meant by that. “God help me, I can’t run through a thousand years of history by myself.”
He took out the last of his little smoke sticks and lit it. Helgi had tried a puff earlier and gotten sick, though he remained a friend of Gerald’s. Now my son proposed to take a boat in the morning and go with him and me to Ice Fjord, where I had some money outstanding I wanted to collect. Hjalmar and Ketill said they would com
e along for the trip, and Thorgunna pleaded so hard that I let her come too.
“An ill thing,” mumbled Sigurd. “The land trolls like not a woman aboard a vessel.
It’s unlucky.”
“How did your fathers bring women to this island?” I grinned.
Now I wish I had listened to him. He was not a clever man, but he often knew whereof he spoke.
At this time I owned a half-share in a ship that went to Norway, bartering wadmal for timber. It was a profitable business until she ran afoul of vikings during the uproar while Olaf Tryggvason was overthrowing Jarl Haakon there. Some men will do anything to make a living—thieves, cutthroats, they ought to be hanged, the worthless robbers pouncing on honest merchantmen. Had they any courage or honor they would go to Ireland, which is full of plunder.
Well, anyhow, the ship was abroad, but we had three boats and took one of these.
Grim went with us others: myself, Helgi, Hjalmar, Ketill, Gerald, and Thorgunna. I saw how the castaway winced at the cold water as we launched her, yet afterward took off his shoes and stockings to let his feet dry. He had been surprised to learn we had a bathhouse—did he think us savages?—but still, he was dainty as a girl and soon moved upwind of our feet.
We had a favoring breeze, so raised mast and sail. Gerald tried to help, but of course did not know one line from another and got them fouled. Grim snarled at him and Ketill laughed nastily. But erelong we were under weigh, and he came and sat by me where I had the steering oar.
He must have lain long awake thinking, for now he ventured shyly: “In my land they have . . . will have . . . a rig and rudder which are better than these. With them, you can sail so close to the wind that you can crisscross against it.”
“Ah, our wise sailor offers us redes,” sneered Ketill.
“Be still,” said Thorgunna sharply. “Let Gerald speak.”