Poul Anderson

by The Golden Horn; The Road of the Sea Horse; The Sign of the Raven (epub)

  Looking up when he had a chance, the youth saw Rognvald's standard pitching above a swarm of helmets, and forced a way thither. Arrows, spears, stones sleeted from above. He saw a bruise on his left arm, where the shirt was torn below the byrnie, and wondered how it had gotten there.

  Rognvald Brusason spied him and yelled:

  "We're driving them back! We're driving them back, do you hear?"

  A dull lowing of horns lifted from the sides. The yeomen had flanked the king's host and were coming in on three fronts. Their foremost warriors chopped with ax and sword, those behind thrust with spears, and further back the archers and slingers fired without stop. Harald saw a man fall with whom he had been dicing and bragging only yesterday. Feet stamped the body into the ground.

  Forward! He struck and struck, taking blows on his shield till it splintered as if mice had been gnawing it. A man was before him, he hacked, his sword bit deep into the red neck and the man went down. But there was no time to be gladdened by this first kill of his life. Sweat stung his eyes, drenched his clothes. Overhead, Rognvald's banner swayed and flapped. The clang of iron, yells and curses of men, his own heartbeat and harsh panting, filled Harald's skull. He hardly marked the jag of pain that went through him. He was still pressing forward.

  All at once he grew aware that he had won close to Olaf. The king's folk were falling, their ranks thinned and pushed against each other. Through a brief gap in the struggle, Harald saw Olaf's sword blaze down, cleaving a man's nose guard and laying his face open so that it almost fell off. The king's standard bearer thrust his staff into the ground and toppled bloodily. Two skalds were dead; Thormodh of Iceland still fought. Then there were foemen again between Harald and Olaf.

  Rognvald looked from his great height over the heads. "Dag Hringsson is here," he croaked, "drawing up his folk for battle. We may yet win."

  Hew, sword, hew!

  Harald's arms had grown wooden. They did not obey him as they should. A yeoman rushed at him, swinging an ax. Harald lifted his shield, but the blow knocked him to one knee. The ax had bitten into the wood almost to his hand. He knew he should use the shield to wrest that weapon from his foe before the man could wrench it loose, but he lacked strength. He smote at the man's legs and could not cut through the leather cross-gaiters. His gullet was one dry fire.

  Letting go the shield, he got to his feet. His next blow glanced off a breast covered in bullhide; and now the ax was free.

  The yeoman wailed and fell. Harald saw a spear in his back. Who had done that? A swirl of combat passed near. He edged away, looking for a banner to join.

  Thus it was that he saw Olaf again, standing with his best men by a tall rock where his flag was planted. Thori Hound threatened the king with a spear. Olaf struck him on the shoulders so the dust smoked off his leather coat; but the battle-blunted sword did not cut through. They fought for a little. Thori was wounded in the hand, but the king could not slay him.

  "Strike down that dog that iron won't bite!" snarled Olaf. His man Bjorn smote with the hammer of an ax so that Thori reeled; and, as he did so, Olaf gave a man by Kalf Arnason his death wound. Thori Hound lowered his spear and drove it through Bjorn's belly. "That's how we stick bears!" he cried, and hauled it out again.

  Harald tried to go help, but his feet were lumps, they would not run. He felt a heavier wetness than sweat and saw blood rivering down his left side. A spear had gone under the short sleeve of his byrnie and pierced him below the arm. But when had he gotten that hurt?

  Through a swoop of dizziness, he saw Thorstein Shipwright strike at Olaf. The ax went into the king's left leg, burying itself over the knee. Finn Arnason cut Thorstein down, but Olaf was staggering. He dropped his sword and leaned against the high rock.

  "God help me," he said through gray lips.

  Thori Hound stabbed from below with his spear, under the king's byrnie and into the groin. Night whirled before Harald.

  He went down on all fours. Olaf was down, a third wound in his neck, Olaf was fallen, Olaf was dead.

  From the side came a new clangor. Dag Hringsson had made ready and now hit the yeoman host. Harald crouched, shuddering. He saw the fight around Olaf end as the leaders went to meet Dag. The whole battle streamed that way, deserting him.

  And this was death. A black fog went before him. He thought dreamlike that he should try to get his mail off and staunch the wound beneath, but he was too weary. Strength was lacking and . . . and . . .

  He sank down on his belly. Centuries passed while they broke Dag behind him. A dead man sprawled close by. Harald knew not which side he had been on. One arm was cut off, he had bled to death and now he lay gaping like an idiot at the empty, empty sky. A breeze ruffled his thin reddish beard.

  Ravens circled low. The ravens of the North had learned where to get food. One landed on the corpse's chest. Harald saw how the bird's eye glittered and how the beak was frozen in a grin. The raven cocked its head, studied the dead man's face and picked out an eye. It flapped upward again.

  Harald drifted through a gray waste. There was no one else, there had never been anything else, only the grayness and the high thin singing in his ears ... a voice, very far off, rising and falling like surf. . . .

  Someone was shaking him. He realized stupidly that his own eyes were still open and that he was looking at Rognvald Brusason. Blood was smeared on the man's cheek.

  "Harald! Up, boy! We have to get away! To horse!"

  Horses. . . . How long since he had combed burrs from the mane of a horse. They were so good-hearted, the shaggy dun Northland ponies; they stood under the currycomb stamping a little, snorting a little, smelling of summer and upland meadows. Their noses were the softest things he had ever touched. . . .

  He felt Rognvald lift him. The words were merely another noise:

  "Done, all done for. The fight is nigh over. We have to get away while we can, you and I. Those chieftains won't let anyone live who stood high with Olaf. Now, on your feet, Christ damn you, into the saddle and let's be gone!"

  Somehow Harald was astride again, holding onto the beast's neck with both arms. Rognvald lay hold of its reins, clucked to his own mount, and galloped off toward the forest.

  * * *

  It was strange how quickly the land was emptied after they were done fighting. But then, most of the yeomen were from nearby garths and wanted to go home and rest.

  The buildings at Stiklastadh were filled with wounded, and still they came, until they had to lie on the ground outside. Thormodh Coalbrows'-Skald groped his way thither with an arrow in his breast. He quarreled with a yeoman and chopped his hand off; thereafter he talked with a leechwife, bade her cut around the iron that sat in him, and gave her the ring in payment which Olaf had given him. He took a pair of tongs and pulled the arrow out himself. Shreds of fat clung to the barbs, red and white. "The king fed us well," he said. "I am still fat around my heart roots." Then he bent forward and died.

  Thori Hound returned to Olaf's body, wiped off the blood, laid it out and spread a cloak over it. Afterward he said that some of the blood had gotten on his wound, which healed uncommonly fast. He was the first among the rebel leaders to think that Olaf the Stout had been a saint.

  Thorgils, the yeoman at Stiklastadh, came and hid the body. Later he took it to Nidharos, the town on the Throndheimsfjord, where he tricked some men into supposing they cast it into the water; but he buried it in a sandy bank. After a year, Bishop Grimkell and the great yeoman chief Einar Thambarskelfir, who had held aloof from this struggle, though once he opposed Olaf, dug it up. It was not corrupted, they said, and some of the hair put in a consecrated fire did not burn. Henceforth Olaf's casket lay on the high altar of St. Clement's Church in Nidharos, where the relic was said to work many miracles.

  Meanwhile, though, Knut the Great had Norway. He set his son Svein, by the Northumbrian ealdorman's daughter, Aelfgifu, over the realm. Some of Olaf's men, such as Finn Arnason, got peace from the new lords and dwelt quietly at home.

>   Nevertheless, the Danish rule was more harsh than folk had awaited. As the years passed, they began to sigh after Olaf, who at the very least had been a Norseman like themselves. Stories grew up about his miracles, both in life and after death; and men agreed that Svein Knutsson and his grasping mother were their own punishment for having slain a saint.

  Chapter II:

  How They Fared to Miklagardh

  1

  Rognvald Brusason left Harald with a poor hind he knew, deep in the forest. He did not tell that family who the hurt youth was, but promised good payment if Harald was brought safe to him. The next day he departed for Sweden. There was scant danger that anyone would learn about Olaf's kinsman. Woods dwellers like this hardly saw an outsider from one year to the next.

  Harald's wounds had cost him much blood and he needed weeks to get back his strength. He chafed, now furious, now sullen, at the dullness. Toward summer's end it was broken. One afternoon the sun turned dark, and white flames blazed around it. Though this lasted but a short while, he waited in terror for the Last Judgment—he, who had perforce aided his host in making offerings to the elves. But night and morning came as always, and the vision faded in men's minds. After a few years they believed that the sun had gone out at the moment of St. Olaf's death.

  By fall Harald was well. With the man's son as guide, he rode off eastward. They went by wilderness paths wherever they could, over the Keel and out of Norway. Once, riding cold and hungry in the rain, Harald made a verse:

  "From wood to wood must I wander

  and hide me without honor.

  Who knows, though, if I never

  shall gain a name men speak of?"

  Safe at last in the rich dales of Sweden, they stayed overnight at whatever houses they came to, like ordinary travelers. Though speech was different from place to place, so that anyone could hear that Harald had spent his life near the Oslofjord while the hind's boy was a Thrond, a Norseman could make himself understood through most of the world he knew. In Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Greenland, England, Germany, Flanders they spoke much the same tongue. Even the lords of Russia could still talk the language of their viking forebears.

  The Uppsala king, who had lent Olaf some men, was a Christian, but most of his folk remained heathen; they had made his parents change the name Jacob First given him to a more seemly Onund. Harald could look for no further help here against the mighty Knut of Denmark. He asked his way to where Rognvald was staying, although his hope of finding him grew more forlorn each day.

  Nor did this Orkneyman, when they greeted each other, see any likelihood of winning home. But nonetheless he had plans, which he and Harald often talked about that winter. In spring they gathered their following, many men who had fled hither from Stiklastadh like themselves, and got ships. They sailed across the Baltic Sea to Russia.

  From the coast they rowed up the Neva River to Lake Ladoga, where the headman at the town feasted them so well that they embarked next day with thumping skulls. The River Volkhov took them on to Novgorod. Here they had been told that Grand Prince Jaroslav now was.

  When he first saw that city, Harald sucked in a quick breath. Never had he known anything so big. The North had only a few small towns, otherwise folk dwelt in thorps and steadings. Novgorod had grown rich on the fur trade, and its leaders had added an empire to its hinterland. The outer walls, of heavy logs banked with earth, loomed sheer on both sides of the river; the eastern landing, where the Norsemen halted, swarmed with people as ants may swarm in a man-high anthill.

  Word had gone ahead, and royal guardsmen waited to offer horses. The ride was slow through narrow, crowded streets, but Harald was so interested in his surroundings that he didn't notice the tedious pace at which he progressed.

  Timbered, galleried houses, gaudily painted, hemmed him in. Booths lined the thoroughfares, spilling over with furs, cloth, tools, weapons, gold and silver. A besmocked peasant drove an oxcart creaking with grain sacks toward a big-bellied trader. A housewife carried a market basket in her hand and a baby on her back. A priest, barefoot, bearded, in a coarse black robe, picked his way between tumbling, squalling children. A warrior strode by, ax on shoulder, outfitted not unlike a Northman, but with his head shaven save for a lock on the right side.

  Though roundskulled, snub-nosed, and less tall, these Russians looked much like folk at home. They wore the same shirt and breeches, but left off the cross-gaiters and added calf-length boots of colored leather. Some men bore the high narrow-brimmed hat of summer, others still clung to the fur cap and belted coat of winter. They seemed more chattersome than Northerners, and men often walked hand in hand.

  Passing a broad open square where stood a platform and a wooden bell tower, Rognvald, who had been here before, said to Harald: "This is where the townsmen meet when they've something great to decide. The bell summons them, and the king must stand and tell them what's to be done, and then they all talk on the question."

  "Why, that's like a Thing at home," said Harald.

  "Well ... no, not really. They call this folkmoot the vieche, and it can often break out into a fight."

  Harald was shocked. A Thing was peace-holy. "I see not why the king suffers that," he said.

  Rognvald gave him a narrow look. "A king must take his folk as he finds them. Olaf met death because he went too strongly forward. Do not forget."

  Rage caught at Harald's throat. "No," he said, "I'll never forget."

  The bridge thundered beneath them and they entered the west side of town, where the great families dwelt. For the first time Harald saw a few brick buildings. On a central square stood a cathedral. Though wooden, it was unlike the stave kirks of Norway, not only of another shape but far bigger and with thirteen tall steeples.

  "What's this I have heard about the Russians being a different kind of Christian from us?" Harald asked.

  "Yes, they call themselves Orthodox rather than Catholic," said Rognvald. "It has something to do with the Creed; and they have Mass in their own tongue instead of Latin, and cross themselves from right to left; nor may they eat bear and rabbit; and they dispute certain powers of the Pope." He shrugged. "Some think it a large matter."

  They came to the house where Jaroslav was staying. This was no mere hall like a Northern king's, but had many rooms, magnificently furnished in the strange stiff Russian way. Harald, Rognvald, and the man's young son Eilif—his wife was home in Orkney—were led to the throne chamber by guards and servants, for noblemen here stood much on their dignity.

  Jaroslav Vladimirovitch, Grand Prince of Novgorod, not yet forty and already among the world's foremost lords, should have been a lusty giant. Instead, Harald saw a dwarfish cripple, one leg withered and twisted, the broad ugly face plowed by pain. His furs, embroidered tunic, red hose, gold and jewels, the carven bulk of his throne mocked him. Yet when he spoke, his words fell strong, and the sunken eyes were very steady.

  "In God's name, welcome," he said. "We who swore friendship with King Olaf will never refuse guesting to his kinsman, nor to those who were faithful to him in his need."

  "Lord," blurted Harald, "with your help—a return—" Rognvald hushed him. Jaroslav chuckled; then, with renewed weightiness, he answered:

  "No, prince, this may not be. Not until God wills it. . . . Though surely He in His own time will restore the Ynglings to their rightful throne of Norway. But as for us, we have too much work on our hands, wars against rebellious Poles and wild Pecheneg tribesmen, for years to come."

  "Gladly would we follow your banners, lord," said Rognvald. In truth that was a good service for men who lay under Knut's wrath.

  "Gladly will you be received among us," Jaroslav told them. "And you will find your chance to win wealth, at least." Breath whistled between his teeth. He gripped the arms of the throne. "Enough," he said harshly. "We shall talk of these things later."

  Harald found himself in an apartment richer than his mother's whole thorp. After he had been steamed clean in the bath house, servants laid out
dazzling garments for him. That night he feasted as if in Heaven: white cloths on the tables, gold and silver mugs, rare courses eaten with golden spoons off fine plate. Not a dog was allowed indoors. Nor were there firepits, though the evening was cool; tile stoves gave ample heat, while hundreds of wax tapers shed light. It galled Harald that he had no gifts to offer, that he had come as a near beggar and wore not even his own clothes. He, descended on the spear side from Harald Fairhair; son of Sigurdh Sow, shire-king of Hringariki; half-brother of Olaf the Stout, king of all Norway—hunted from his land like a wolf, by a pack of yeomen! The food and the wines turned ashen in his mouth.

  * * *

  Years before, Olaf had been betrothed to Ingigerdh, daughter of Olaf Lap-King, the then ruler of Sweden. But an old quarrel between those two namesakes had flared afresh and Igigerdh was wedded instead to Jaroslav. Afterward the breach was healed and Olaf the Stout married her sister Astridh. However, his son, Magnus, was by a serving woman named Alfhild. In spite of all this, Ingigerdh was ever a friend to Norse Olaf and his house. It was largely her doing that Jaroslav had given not only refuge when the exiled king fled to them but some help when he tried to regain Norway. She dealt with Magnus, who had come in his father's train and stayed behind when Olaf returned, as if he were her own son. Now Magnus was become a handsome lad of seven years.

  One morning not long after Harald Sigurdharson's arrival, a servant asked him if he would go have speech with the Grand Princess in the garden. Puzzled, the youth went out. The air was cool and damp, but sunlight spilled on the first tender green of springtime. Ingigerdh sat in an arbor among the usual maidservants of a Russian noblewoman. They sewed and giggled among themselves. She herself sat tautly, wordless. Only one of her children was with her, the girl Elizabeth, about the same age as Magnus Olafsson. Those two were playing at her feet. When Magnus saw his uncle, he jumped up and cried importantly, "Good day to you, kinsman!"