Odin’s Child

by Bruce Macbain

  Instead, we turned to doing what we could for Gudrun.

  Whoever stabbed her had a faltering hand and missed her heart. He would have been kinder to have done the job cleanly. It took her long to die.

  Meanwhile, Jorunn bided her time. For so long she had submitted herself to her husband—out of love, or duty, who could say? But the savaging of her child changed that.

  All evening Thorvald kept his post by the door, haranguing us in wild, incoherent sentences. Terrified himself, he was terrifying to us. We kept our eyes averted—I especially, for I felt that his were constantly on me. Instead we busied ourselves with changing the compresses of moss every little while, and bathing Gudrun’s cold face and hands.

  Mercifully, she never woke up.

  I must have sunk at last into an exhausted sleep, for I was struggling in a violent dream when I opened my eyes suddenly and sat bolt upright. Hours had passed. The room was silent and dark as pitch except for the flicker of a lamp flame above my head. Behind the flame hovered my mother’s face, pale as a ghastly moon in the black sky, her unbound hair streaming loose over her shoulders.

  Not saying a word, she took my sword down from its peg on the wall and put it in my hands, leaning so close that her damp hair brushed my face. Still half in my dream, I rose and followed her outside. There I found Gunnar standing with two of the thralls, armed with spears, and four horses. A night wind had risen. It whipped his hair against his face.

  “I told her to wake you, brother. Even now she wasn’t going to make you disobey him. Did I do right?”

  “Where is he?”

  “Out there,” he pointed with his chin, contemptuously, toward the mountain, “wandering and talking to himself. Mother leads us now.”

  I felt sick to my stomach. “May the gods help him, Gunnar.”

  “May the gods fling him down the bloody crater and have done! Are you coming or not?”

  I eased my sword a little from its scabbard and tested its edge with my thumb. Its name was ‘Neck-Biter’. It was an old weapon, heavy and plain-hilted, that had belonged to several men before it came to me. Others, no doubt, had killed with it. I, at the old age of sixteen, had never drawn it in anger. Time to change that.

  I swung into the saddle and kicked my horse hard. Gunnar led us at a dead gallop into the dusk. The rest of that night and all the next day we followed the river, stopping only once along the way to beg some curds and milk from a farmwife for our breakfast. Late in the afternoon, we reached the coast, and turning northwards, rode up along the black sand beach toward the mouth of the Whitewater.

  Before we’d gone half the distance we found them. A big finback whale had beached itself and Hrut’s two sons were there with a couple of their hired men and some packhorses to cut it up for meat.

  Brand, the eldest, who was standing spraddle-legged on the whale’s back, saw us first and shouted a warning to the other three. They spun around to face us. Plainly they hadn’t expected us to come after them or they wouldn’t have been so few and so far from home. How they must despise us, I thought.

  We dismounted and started towards them, Gunnar striding ahead, loose-limbed and balancing his crescent-bladed axe in his hand—easy as could be, although I knew he had never fought a man to the death before.

  When we were close enough to see the ragged scar on Mord’s cheek, Gunnar asked mockingly if he might have another chance at that eye. “‘Second time perfect’ as they say.”

  “What for?” said Mord, edging sideways. “We’re quits, Hjalti-godi said so.”

  “Quits, you dog-shit, You say that?”

  “Get back to your mountain, you sons-of-trolls, you haven’t any business with proper men.”

  “Fight me!”

  But fighting wasn’t to Mord’s taste. “Bork!” he shouted. At his command, the broad-shouldered fellow standing beside him ran forward and swung at Gunnar with his billhook. Gunnar crouched, leaning to the side, then sprang forward and brought his axe down so hard on the man’s head that it split him to the jaw and his teeth spilled out on the ground.

  This was too much for Mord. Before Gunnar could regain his balance, he dashed past him, leapt on his horse, and galloped off. An instant later, Gunnar was on his own mount, and, followed by both our thralls, was pounding after him down the beach and out of sight.

  Their other man, deciding that this fight was no business of his, threw down his gaff and ran away.

  Which left me and Brand face to face.

  He was taller than me by a head, and he held a long-handled axe that he had been using to carve the whale.

  “Are you coming down, Brand Hrutsson,” I shouted, “or must I come up?” It sounded like a fine, brave thing to say.

  “Either way, Blackie, it’s more meat for my axe!”

  I threw a stone, which struck him on the shoulder. He gave a shout, jumped down from the whale’s back, and ran at me.

  His axe head whistled past my face, missing me by an inch. I sprang back in pure terror. Then, with one swooping cut after another, he drove me backwards into the water until both of us were thigh deep in the surf and there was nowhere left to run. He coiled himself for another swing.

  The thought flashed through my mind that I was about to die and that my life, so far, had been nothing to boast of. As the axe came down, I shut my eyes and dashed in low, grappling him around the chest. The force of his swing threw us both off our feet and down we went, rolling over together in the churning water.

  Then it was hands, knees, and teeth. I bit his hand, making him let go the axe, but he kicked free of me and we came up spluttering and pawing our hair from our eyes. He pulled his sword and waded in close, cut at me once, and again. I still had my sword in hand and, half-blinded by the streaming water, struck out wildly with it.

  Neck-Biter bit deep. Brand’s head lolled sideways, and, turning around, he took five steps toward the shore before he pitched over on his face.

  I sank down beside him in the reddening sea-foam.

  A little time passed while I sat in the water, my chest heaving and my limbs shaking. Then, hearing the thud of hoofs on the sand, I looked up to see Gunnar and the thralls coming back.

  “Tangle-Hair!” cried my brother, throwing himself down at the water’s edge.

  “It’s all right, I’m not hurt.”

  “Look at you.”

  I hadn’t noticed. Brand’s point had gone deep into my left biceps when he lunged at me, and the blood was dripping from my fingertips. As I looked, pain lanced me like a hot needle.

  “Mord?” I asked, when I got my breath.

  “Too fast for me. And I didn’t care to chase him all the way to Hrutsstead, they keep a small army there. We can’t stay here in the open.” Looking from me to Brand and back again, he gave a low whistle. “I wish I’d seen it.”

  “I fought like a plowboy. I was scared out of my wits.”

  “Brother,” he laughed, “any fool can be fearless, just look at me.” He touched Brand’s body with his foot. “There’s a funeral gift for our sister, paid for with your fear. There’s nothing dearer bought than that. Cut his head the rest of the way off. Go on, do it! Skidi Dung-Beetle,”—he motioned to one of our thralls—“give us your cloak to wrap it in.”

  Gunnar sawed off the cloven head of the man called Bork, and together we hurriedly covered the two corpses with stones, as the law requires. That done, we mounted and rode away, stopping only at the farmstead we had passed earlier that morning to give notice of our killings, which the law also demands.

  The sun was low when we slid wearily from our saddles in the yard of Thorvaldsstead. Jorunn Ship-Breast watched us from the doorway.

  “What have my sons done?”

  We tossed the heads in their bloody wrapping at her feet. At the sight of it her eyes caught fire.

  “Your sister will have joy of it,” she said. “She died in the night. Her grave is dug. We’ve waited for you.”

  The words she spoke were plain, but black hate
and battle joy rang in her voice.

  I felt it, too. Round and round in my head ran the words, You are a warrior. Never mind the fear and the pain, nothing that a man does is better than this.

  That night we busied ourselves with preparations for the coming of Hrut. By dawn the weapons had been sharpened, the thralls armed, lookouts posted.

  But when Strife-Hrut Ivarsson came, it was with no army of killers at his back. He came instead with nine farmers as witnesses, as the law prescribes, and from his saddle screamed at us the formula of summons to the next summer’s Althing on a charge of murder.

  In amazement we watched them wheel their mounts and gallop off.

  “Murder!” I exploded. “It’s not murder, it’s manslaughter, rightful killing in feud. We declared it so at his neighbor’s farm.”

  Gunnar shot me a worried look. “Odd, did you not recognize that selfsame neighbor just now among the nine witnesses? Either bribed or frightened, it makes no difference, he’ll swear to Hrut’s version of the facts, not ours.”

  “Oh wife, oh sons of mine,” said Thorvald in a voice like doom. “D’you begin to see now what you have done?”

  He had come back from his wandering just after Gunnar and I reached home. I had expected him to be furious at us, but as so often happened with him, his frenzy had given way to dumb resignation. After his daughter’s burial, he had taken to his high-seat again, and from there, all night, he watched us—not helping, but at least, not hindering our preparations for battle.

  “You may cry to the mountains that Hrut murdered your sister, but you have no proof. Instead it is you now who face trial for murder.”

  “But the law—” protested Gunnar.

  “Bugger the law, you fool. You’ve tossed a sword at Hrut’s feet—for law is the sharpest sword of all. And he is not the man to let it lie. He will go away from the Althing with our lives, our land, with everything that is ours, and the law will smile on him.”

  There was a deep silence in the room. For this sounded to us not like a madman’s ravings, but the hard-earned wisdom of a man who had once sat among the forty-eight godis of Iceland. Vigdis moved closer to Gunnar and put her hand in his. The thralls traded tense, stealthy glances.

  “No, Husband,” cried Jorunn, “you are wrong. Whether you like to admit it or not, there is one who can save us, for nothing is beyond his wit.”

  “Shut your mouth, woman, a troll has twisted your tongue! Even if he could do what you say, I would not beg my life of that man.”

  “No, but I will, and he’ll do it for me and his nephews—and because it’s his Christian duty. Thank God for my brother, Hoskuld Long-Jaws!”

  †

  Soon after this, black night came down on us like a cover on a kettle. It was a brief and pale light that drifted down the smoke hole when the feeble sun got his head up over the horizon, only to sink back at once, exhausted, into the sea. Snow piled high against the door, sealing us in our smoky tomb. We huddled with the animals for warmth, drank much, but without cheer, and thought our own gloomy thoughts. Yuletide came, but we, holding neither to the old religion nor the new, scarcely knew how to keep it.

  Winter wore on. And then one day, the Ranga loosened in its icy sleeve, the sun grew stronger, and the rains came. Thorvald would not sow the barley seed that spring, for he said he did not expect to reap the crop. But, under our mother’s eye, Gunnar and I took his place.

  Our neighbors took their fighting-stallions to the South Quarter Thing, and no doubt, recalled to each other, shaking their heads, that bad business of a year ago. People with little to remember forget none of it.

  We kept to ourselves and waited.

  And at last the day came when it was time to ride to the Althing.

  6

  Friend Kalf

  Jorunn bustled about the yard, ordering, haranguing, directing. “Daughter-in-law, set down the bedding and help me with the cooking things. Skidi Dung-Beetle, is this how you tighten a girth? Skin the man, must I do all?”

  The fat-bellied horses shifted patiently under towers of sheepskins and tenting, cauldrons and tripods, clean clothes and weapons, while we scurried back and forth between house and yard.

  Our caravan complete at last with everything needful for a week’s camping on Thingvellir Plain, Jorunn called out with forced cheerfulness, “Husband, take your place in the lead.” She did not want to shame him in front of the thralls, who were gathered to see us off. He obeyed her like a sullen child, but it was Jorunn who gave the signal to advance. Looking, with all our baggage, like a family of tinkers, we lurched up the stony track that led from our home-field, out into the wild country beyond.

  Our first destination was Hoskuldsstead.

  Hoskuld Long-Jaws was my mother’s brother, a widower who farmed at Hawkdale-by-Geysir, in the house where he and Jorunn had grown up. Not being designed by nature for an active life, he had devoted himself to the pursuits of farming and law. He had succeeded so far in both that his fifty milk cows and two hundred milking ewes were the fattest in southern Iceland, and his law-wit was sought after by many. Even powerful godis were not ashamed to take his advice in their lawsuits.

  My mother wanted more than advice. She would ask him to be our advocate and plead our case at the Althing. Being fifteen years younger than he, she saw in him more a father than a brother, and her faith in him was boundless. She had already sent him word of our troubles, and it was arranged that we should break our journey at his house before going on together to the Althing.

  And what had Black Thorvald to say about this? Not a whisper of a word. During the winter he had grown ever more listless and despondent, his energies so low he could seldom even rouse himself to a rage. He gave up washing and combing his hair, and very nearly gave up eating. By winter’s end he had aged ten years.

  For myself, I was determined to be hopeful, and so clung to my mother and Gunnar, whose optimism never flagged.

  †

  Our way lay northwest across an open heath ribbed with steep, stony ridges cut by swift rivers. We rode for hours, it seemed, before the great glittering rampart of Long Glacier began to grow large on the horizon. And meanwhile a ribbon of smoke curling up from Hekla’s peak still smudged the sky behind us, as though the volcano were unwilling to let us go. The heath gave way to a stretch of watery meadow in which treacherous bogs lay hidden. Beyond the meadow, we came to a range of gray, stony hills that rose like whales’ backs from the mossy earth. The track we followed wound between them and brought us suddenly to Gulfoss, a thundering cascade of water that spilled into the river below us. We broke our journey here, and while the women saw to supper, we men found a hot pool and soaked ourselves in the steaming, milk-white water.

  Next morning, we traversed several miles of smiling farm land, passing any number of farmhouses along the way, until abruptly, as by a line drawn across a map, the tilled land ended and the great lava field began. Here stood pillars of black and twisted rock that were said to be the bodies of night-trolls caught and frozen by the sun.

  Scrabbling up a hill of cinders, we saw spread out before us the red, cracked plain of Hawkdale, overhung with the pall of countless smokes. We kept tight rein on our mounts now, for they hated the sulfur stench and shied at the spitting pools of hot mud and the roaring jet of Geysir.

  More hours of riding brought us, at last, out of the reek of Hawkdale and to the edge of Hoskuld’s fields. With the sun already slanting toward the hills, we straggled into his yard and slid from our horses.

  My uncle was an elongated man: long of neck, long of nose, long of tooth, and his body, too, was put together of long, brittle limbs. He stood in the doorway, peering owlishly at us until he could discern our shapes and a little of our features, for he was nearly blind. He put out his arms as we approached and embraced us gravely, one by one.

  “Sister,” he pronounced in his mournful bass—a single word as good as a speech—stern, tender, and reproachful all at once. Jorunn leaned against his chest and
dabbed at her eyes. “Gunnar the Handsome,” he spoke over her head, “you look fit as ever. And Vigdis Sveinsdottir. He bent down for her to kiss his cheek. “Odd Tangle-Hair, what a black, hairy face you’ve gotten.” He held my chin in his big-knuckled hand, turning me critically this way and that.” And of course, Thorvald … welcome to my hall.”

  The two men barely touched hands. There was no love lost here—not for these thirty years past, ever since Hoskuld took up the new religion and did everything in his power to get Jorunn to divorce her heathen husband. This was the one instance, as I have already said, in which she had disobeyed her brother.

  As hirelings and thralls took our horses, we trooped through the door into the glow of Hoskuld’s spacious hall, far larger than our own.

  In honor of our visit, the wooden walls were hung with tapestries—fine stuffs crowded with scenes of warriors and sailing ships, which I never tired of looking at. On the wall-benches, thick fleeces were spread where we would sit to dinner and later sleep. Along one wall stood tubs of butter and barrels of milk and beer, and over the long hearth hung simmering cauldrons of meat that filled the air with its savory aroma. My uncle lived well.

  “Towels to wipe away the dust of travel,” he ordered. They were brought promptly by the servants. “Ah, but don’t sit down yet, kinsmen,” he said, “for we’ve still time before dinner to walk the farm.”

  We always walked the farm. This was our ritual every spring upon arriving: to admire his new lambs, foals, and calves. Husbandry offered the only safe subject of talk between Hoskuld and my father.

  Kalf Slender-Leg came in the nick of time to rescue me. Kalf was Hoskuld’s grandson and my closest friend—to tell the truth, my only friend, besides Gunnar.

  “Odd, how goes it with you?”

  “Pretty well, friend Kalf.”

  We always began shyly like that. Months at a stretch passed between our meetings and we surprised each other every time by being taller, gruffer, hairier, different in a dozen small ways. He was half a year younger than me, gangling and lean, with curly red hair and eyes quick to smile. His whole nature was brisk and lively.