by J. A. Snow
“The gods be with you!” the prince called out after them as they started down the cobblestones and they waved until they lost sight of him on the curvy road. “Slay the serpent!”
Aegir smiled. “We are going home, Brother!” he said happily. “We will see Snapp again! And, we have saved our moder!”
Kari nodded and smiled too, a smile tempered with realization that the word home would not mean the home they once had. Papi would be there and he would be angry beyond reason at what they had done. They had defied the man who raised them, however despicable he was to them he was still their papi. He watched the woman sitting in the wagon beside their boat. What were her wishes? he wondered. Surely, she would not want to return to Fornjot and resume a life of beatings and humiliation. While his heart fluttered wildly at the thought of returning to familiar surroundings, his mind was racing too. He glanced over at his brother; young Aegir had grown in the short time they had been in Lindanisse. He was no longer as gaunt as he had once been, although he would always walk with a limp; a transformation had come over him. Was this what it felt like to become men? he wondered. He hastened his steps and, for once, Aegir was keeping up with him.
In Aegir’s mind, too, there were thoughts swirling. He could feel the strength in his own body had grown through the long hours and days of laboring over the new boat. The Kaleva! After so many years under the oppressive hand of their father, he felt he had been lifted up; he was no longer afraid as he had once been. They would stand up to Fornjot when they returned; they would no longer be little boys subject to his will! And, they would protect their moder from harm! He glanced up at the grey sky, remembering his grandfather fondly, who was surely at the right hand of Odin now, watching over them!
They passed through the street of rags to say goodbye to their friend, Henrik, before they went down to the shore and Gustav’s men unloaded the boat from the wagon. As they shoved off in the waters of the bay, with their mother safely nestled in the belly of the Kaleva, the sun broke through the clouds, just for an instant, casting golden shards of light on the bow of the boat, illuminating the placard with the pure radiance of Valhalla!
Chapter Twenty-Four “Strange Bedfellows”
Grim finally invited Logi and Dagstorp to stay the night and rest before they continued on their journey along the banks of the Great Sea and, after several hours of conversation and strong spirits, they were all quite drunk and eager for sleep. Dagstorp found a comfortable corner to curl up in near the fire, and Logi, wrapped up in a blanket brought to him by one of Grim’s daughters, felt his eyes closing quickly, the flames flickering in the pit growing dim.
All at once someone joined him beneath the blanket, jostling to find a comfortable spot while yanking the blanket from him. “I say there!” said Logi, annoyed when his attempt at sleep was thwarted. “There is only room for one under this blanket! Go find another!”
The person’s back was up against him and Logi could only see light-colored hair in the darkness of the room. “Shut up and let me sleep,” said a familiar voice. Odin! The old one-eyed god hadn’t forsaken him after all! Logi was ecstatic!
“Where have you been, Odin?” he asked boldly, with a hint of irritation. “Do you know the troubles you have put me through? Hungry wolves and disagreeable trolls, not to mention contrary weather! What has taken you so long to get here?”
“Shut up, Logi,” said Odin. “I have come a long way over the mountains and I am very tired. We can talk in the morning.”
“But, we must discuss what is to be done with this Grim person!” said Logi, lowering his voice to a whisper. “He seems quite friendly! What am I to do with him? I can hardly kill him while he is smiling at me!”
Odin snorted and startled himself awake. “Marry one of his daughters,” he said in a sleepy voice. “You will be his heir then and have all the power you desire as soon as the old man dies.”
Logi smiled in the dark. He wouldn’t have to fight Grim after all. He would just have to wait and bide his time until Grim died. What challenge was he anyway? He was just an old man surrounded by an army of women. A chuckle escaped from his lips as he finally closed his eyes. As usual, Odin had come through just in the nick of time! He could feel himself slipping back into slumber. They would make more plans in the morning.
When the sun rose in the morning, Logi kicked off his blanket and stretched his massive arms and legs to loosen the stiffness in them. He rolled over and stared down at the sleeping body beneath the blanket. Poor old Odin, he thought. Perhaps he would have to take over both Asgard and the Trondelag for these two old men who only seemed good at sleeping. He poked at Odin’s backside. “Wake up, Odin,” he said. “We have plans to make!”
The form in the blanket moved slightly and then turned toward him. Logi stared down in disbelief for it wasn’t Odin who had been lying beside him but one of Grim’s many daughters, and not the young, pretty one! He leapt to his feet in horror. The woman in his bed smiled up at him. “Good morning,” she said quite sweetly, fluttering her lashes. “Come back under the blankets where it is warm.”
Logi looked frantically around the room, at the other sleeping bodies on the floor. When he spied Dagstorp in the corner, he rushed to his side. “Dagstorp!” he whispered. “Come on, Man, wake up! We have to get out of here!”
The troll opened one eye and frowned. “I am quite comfortable where I am,” he said, rolling away from Logi. “Nei one else is awake anyway. Leave me alone.”
Logi gripped Dagstorp by his shoulder. “You don’t understand!” he said frantically. “This is some kind of a trap!”
Dagstorp opened his other eye. “You are the most peculiar boy I have ever met,” he said, sighing and pushing himself up into a seated position. “What is the matter with you? We have a warm bed and food in our bellies and you want to leave?”
Logi leaned in close and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Come outside with me,” he pleaded. “Please, Dagstorp! We need to talk in private!”
Being hustled outside, wiping the sleep-crust from his eyes, he was quite irritated with Logi. He sat down on an old tree stump in the yard and crossed his arms angrily. “What is so important that we get up so early and come out here in the cold? And, why are you so anxious to leave this place? Have your britches caught fire?”
“Dagstorp!” said Logi. “You don’t understand. Odin came to visit me last night! He told me the plan was for me to marry one of Grim’s daughters and that I would inherit all the power when the old man dies!”
“A dream, Logi. It was only a dream,” said Dagstorp. “It’s not a bad idea though!”
“But, sometime in the night, a woman crept into my bed!” continued Logi. “One of the ugly ones! I don’t even remember when. When I woke up, she was there! I just know it is a plot to force me to marry her!”
Dagstorp threw his head back and laughed. “Odin came to see you? Is that the fairy story you want me to believe when I could hear you and that girl all night long giggling and playing beneath the blankets? Really, Logi, you could have been a bit more discreet! And, right under her papi’s nose! Good thing old Grim passed out from too much mead or you would have your head on a stake by now!”
Logi collapsed to the ground, crossing his legs and holding his aching head. “I don’t remember that,” he said. “I swear to you, Dagstorp, Odin did come to me last night! He was there, I tell you! And, I never touched that woman! I only discovered her in my bed this morning!”
The troll went behind a bush to relieve himself while Logi tried to sort things out in his hazy head. When Dagstorp returned, he looked Logi square in the face, as a father would do a son. “This place isn’t all that bad. I could live here quite happily. I may even take one of Grim’s daughters for myself!”
Logi felt a nervous laugh come up from deep in his throat. “You? Marry one of Grim’s daughters? That’s a hoot!” he said without a second thought.
Dagstorp’s eyes grew dark and his big round nostrils flared out like the t
hroat of a bullfrog. “That is funny to you, Logi?” he said coldly. “That any woman would consider me as a husband?”
Logi stammered. “I didn’t mean that,” he began.
“Well,” replied Dagstorp, “I’ll have you know women value kindness and gentleness every bit as much as muscles and a handsome face! You will never know how to treat a woman! I’ll wager your own moder kicked you out of the house for your rudeness!”
Logi was silent. His moder. He would probably never see his moder again, and his papi would probably beat him within an inch of his life if he returned after running away with Odin. Oh well, he thought. She was only a woman, after all, and she had always favored his brother, Kari anyway; he didn’t care whether he ever saw her again. For an odd moment, he thought about his little brothers and had the slightest twinge of guilt at how he had treated them. It passed quickly, however, when the door to the longhouse opened and Grim came walking across the yard toward them.
“What a fine morning!” said Grim happily. “Look at the Great Sea! Isn’t that a beautiful sight?”
Logi and Dagstorp exchanged worried glances.
“My daughters tell me you have decided to stay with us,” Grim continued. “They tell me you may have already chosen a favorite from among them!”
Logi’s words stuck in his throat. “Well, I….,” he began nervously, expecting an ugly scene.
Instead, Grim slapped him on the back soundly. “I am glad to welcome you to our family!” he said. “We shall send word to King Alf, my late wife’s brother, down in Alfheim. He will surely want to meet you!”
Chapter Twenty-Six “Returning Home”
The Kaleva proved to be a much sturdier ship than her predecessor and the homeward-bound trio made it to the shores of Kvenland safely, even though the winds were howling and the currents in the bay were quite mighty. Poor Hildi huddled between the thwarts of the boat, wrapped warmly in blankets given to them by Prince Gustav trying to sleep, but her stomach heaved with every swell of the water. By the time they landed on the southern shore, she stumbled out of the boat in a nauseous state; her lips were green and her eyes sunken and shadowed. “I don’t think I can survive another boat ride,” she told the boys. “Can’t we just walk the rest of the way home?”
“Don’t be silly, Moder,” said Kari. “We have a fine boat and it will take us much longer to reach the village by foot!”
“I don’t want to return to the village,” said Hildi. “I want to return to my people. I want you boys to come with me.”
Aegir spoke then, his courage bolstered by a strange new flood of manliness he felt inside himself. “Kari and I have decided we are men of the sea now,” he said softly. “We will get you safely to your people, if that is where you choose to go, but we are not herders, Moder! We can’t give up the sea now that we have conquered it!”
“We have conquered nothing,” said Kari. “All we have done is get to Eistland and home alive, and barely at that. Moder is right. We can’t take her back to Papi. And, what do you think he will do to us when he finds out what we have been up to? Nei, we will return to the village because it is our home. But, we will not return to the house of our papi.”
Aegir shuddered to think of the punishment they would be in for, if they chose to return to the family home. “We will take you wherever you wish to go, Moder, or you can stay with us. We are strong enough to stand up to Fornjot! Now that we have our own boat, we can build our own longhouse! We can fish in the summer and make our living on the sea.”
Hildi realized, at that moment, that her boys were no longer boys; on their journey to Eistland they had somehow morphed into men. “It won’t be hard to find the herd,” she said sadly. “I know the trails well. And, I will visit you every summer when the herd moves south. I will watch the horizon for this funny little kite-boat of yours.” A smile shone through the tears in her eyes. “The Kaleva.”
She finally agreed to make the voyage north with them; she soon found that if she closed her eyes and covered her head with the blanket, the dizziness and nausea wasn’t quite so bad. The newly-stitched kite worked most remarkably and in half the time the first voyage took them they arrived back at the village on the Gandvik just before the first snow-fall. They tied up the Kaleva under the curious stares of the men on the docks and took Hildi to find the herd. They spotted her family almost immediately, in the field beyond the family homestead, just as the Saamis were rolling up their tents to move south and she went to join them, hugging her boys tightly before they parted. “I will see you again in the spring,” she whispered in their ears. Kari wiped away the tears trickling down his mother’s cheeks. “Don’t worry, Moder,” he said. “Aegir and I will be fine.”
“Just be careful dealing with your papi,” she warned. “There is nei telling what he will do.”
Hildi waved good-bye, surrounded by her brothers and uncles and cousins, for she learned sadly that her own parents had passed away over the past winter, and Kari and Logi watched as the herd moved on, their sharp hooves clacking and stirring up dust along the road, their pig-like snorting fading away as they disappeared over the horizon. “Don’t worry, Aegir,” Kari said, laying his hand on his brother’s shoulder. “We will see her again!”
They wandered back to the harbor sadly and hoisted the Kaleva out of the water, setting her to rest on the sand. A group of villagers had gathered there, watching and staring at them. “Welcome home, Lads!” said a fisherman they had known all their lives. “You are a welcome sight!” said another. The crowd moved in closer, reaching out to touch the strange new boat. Kari and Aegir did not expect such a welcome and were surprised that anyone even knew they had been gone at all. Before they knew it, there were a dozen men of the sea asking questions about the kite-boat. “Can you build one for me?” asked one man, and then another.
“Maybe we won’t have to fish for our supper after all!” said Aegir happily, for building boats was what he loved the most.
“But, where will we build them?” Kari asked solemnly, knowing Fornjot had the only building large enough to work on a boat over the winter months.
Suddenly, a strange silence came over the crowd and several of the men moved away. Like a blast of arctic wind, Kari and Aegir felt the mood shift and they watched as the people parted in the middle to let someone pass; that someone was Fornjot, the giant of Kvenland. In his matted, fur robe and his grey hair awry from many days without a comb, he lumbered through the line of villagers and stood before them, staring blankly at the sons who had deserted him. Kari and Aegir froze and their eyes locked with their father’s. Aegir, in particular, watched the axe that hung from his belt, ready to bolt if he un-sheathed it suddenly. Kari took a deep breath and stood up tall and straight. He was no longer going to fear his father! The time of reckoning had come! “Hello, Papi,” he said with an air of courage he did not feel in his gut. “Have you been well?”
Fornjot’s eyes narrowed as he stared at the boat behind his sons and then focused on the runic inscription on the bow. “The Kaleva?” he said. “You named your new boat after my papi?” His voice was raspy, with the hint of congestion, as if he had been ill. Will this be his excuse to fly into a rage, wondered Kari, because we have not named our boat after him?
“It was actually Gustav who gave our boat her name,” said Kari. “You remember the prince who gave us Kvenland? We met him quite by accident in Eistland.”
“What were you boys doing in Eistland?” Fornjot’s eyes were bloodshot from the effects of too much mead. He reeled a bit on his feet and then took a step forward. Aegir felt his body stiffen and he kept watching his papi’s axe.
“That doesn’t really matter now,” Kari continued without skipping a beat, but inside his heart was pounding. “We have a dozen orders for our new kite-boats,” he continued. “Would you allow us to build them in your boathouse over the winter? We would be willing to share our profits with you, of course.”
Fornjot’s eyes closed momentarily. Aegir watched as h
is father’s giant hand moved down and rested on his axe-head. Kari was watching too, all the while searching from the corners of his eyes for a weapon to defend himself and his brother. Fornjot took another step forward and Kari could see his enormous frame teetering slightly. He’s drunk, he thought with disgust, confident he could subdue his father easily in his inebriated condition. “Well, what do you say, Papi?” he asked boldly. “Shall we be partners or will you force us to compete with the family business?”
Fornjot suddenly dropped to one knee and then fell forward, face down in the sand. Everyone standing there heard a hideous moan escape from Fornjot’s huge body as the life passed out of him.
Fornjot, the jarl of Kvenland, was dead!
Chapter Twenty-Seven “Glod”
“I am not a breeding bull!” spat Logi, when he and Dagstorp were finally alone the next evening after everyone had retired. They had escaped the longhouse and were sitting on a large rock overlooking the Great Sea under the brilliant nororijos. “And, he can’t treat me as if I were one of his livestock!”
“You must understand his dilemma,” reasoned Dagstorp. “His wife gave him all girls. What is the man to do? What’s wrong with marrying one of his daughters anyway? They aren’t any uglier than the women in Kvenland! And you can accomplish what you came here for without shedding any blood!”
Logi grimaced. “Some advisor you have turned out to be!” he said sourly. “You are supposed to be on my side!”
“I am on your side, you foolish boy,” replied the troll, growing irate and impatient. “You are having your kingdom offered to you without having to kill anyone to get it! Besides, there is one of his daughters you have taken a liking to; I saw it the first day we arrived, so don’t deny it. Take the pretty one and give Grim the sons he wants so desperately. The old man will die soon enough and then you can do as you like.”
“She is pretty but she is built like a moose!” said Logi. “I am not used to women so large!”