Odin’s Child

by Bruce Macbain

  He had a sheaf of arrows in his belt and two bows. He handed me one.

  “Heh, what’s this?” said my uncle, frowning down on us from his great height. Even though he had a stoop, he was quite tall. He made some rumbling and expostulating noises but ended with the observation that, “Young dogs must go off on their own,” though, he warned, we should get no supper if we were late returning.

  We were always ‘young dogs’ to Hoskuld, which we took to be an affectionate name, for he was a kindly man at bottom, though inclined to be pompous.

  Promising to be prompt for dinner, we raced out the gate, followed by Kalf’s black-and-tan bitch and by an envious look from Gunnar.

  “Hel’s Hall!” I swore, punching him on the back, “it’s good to see you!”

  “And you, by Odin’s crow!”

  Kalf liked to imitate my speech, swearing roundly by Hel, Thor, and Odin, though he was a baptized Christman, as well as following my lead in every other way. I loved him for it, I admit it. I craved admiration, and Kalf Slender-Leg was one who gave it gladly and unstintingly, even when I had done nothing to deserve it.

  Though this time, of course, I had. I had killed a man.

  “With this?” he asked, touching my sword in its scuffed old scabbard.

  “Aye.”

  “Tell me everything.”

  I had no intention of telling him how, when the fight was over, I had sunk down on my knees in the water, sick and shaking. But in the end I told him that, too.

  “Yes,” he murmured, “it would be like that the first time.”

  “The first time, but not the next,” I said in a hard voice. “The father and the brother still live.”

  “You mean to kill them too?”

  “If it comes to that.”

  “Which it might, you know. You’ve never been to the Althing, have you?”

  I shrugged, not liking to be reminded of the solitary life I was forced to lead.

  “I’ve been lots of times with Grandfather. Thor’s beard! The year before last, two families wrangled over a boundary stone, armed to the teeth and with all their supporters around them. When it was over eleven men were dead. It happens all the time.”

  “So much the better.”

  “Though I suppose Grandfather will get you through it all right, he’s never lost a suit.”

  “He’s never had the sons of Black Thorvald for clients.”

  Kalf knew me well enough to be cautious on the subject of my father. “Come on, Tangle-Hair, let’s hunt!” He gave me a friendly push and raced away up a hillside, a fleet and tireless runner.

  In a high boulder-strewn meadow we startled a brace of moorhens. They flew up with a beating of speckled wings, but one tumbled back instantly with Kalf’s arrow through it. Then, seeing my shot go wide by a mile, he drew and loosed again. The second bird fell.

  “Fair bit of shooting, Kalf.”

  “Well,” he flashed me a grin, “it’s a poor fellow who isn’t good at something.”

  After that, we joked, wrestled, ran with the dog, and came to rest at last, out of breath, on a grassy hillside. We threw ourselves down and stared into the blue sky.

  “Odd.”

  “Hmm.”

  “You remember the cliff?”

  We always talked about that.

  Two summers ago we had hiked from Hoskuldsstead all the way to the coast at Reykjanes and gone climbing on the cliffs with ropes and long-handled nets to gather puffins’ eggs. The coast-dwellers pursue this dangerous activity from childhood. We, being inlanders, had never tried it before.

  On the portion of cliff we selected, there happened to be a girl—a plump little thing about our age, who sat in the sling of her rope, with her skirt around her thighs, and swung from cranny to crag, with a great deal more confidence than we felt. Once we had secured our ropes with pegs and lowered ourselves down the sheer cliff side, she began to tease us and then to fling eggs at us, which seemed to amuse her greatly.

  I could think of nothing better than to curse her, but resourceful Kalf climbed back up to the top of the cliff, saw where she’d pegged her rope, and cut it half way through. He lay on his belly with his head and shoulders over the edge so she could see that only his thin arms—which were stronger, fortunately, than they looked—were keeping her from falling to the rocks below. She screamed her head off, but there was no one about to hear. After a good long time, he and I together hauled her up.

  She called us filthy names for a while and then we became friends. Her name was Thorgrima, she said, the daughter of a local fisherman. We spent a happy afternoon together exploring the caves in the neighborhood. Along the way, we explored Thorgrima, too. It was Kalf’s first time with a girl.

  “I went back there last month,” he said.

  “Not looking for our little friend, were you? Nobody could be that lucky twice.”

  “No, no. Just to watch for ships and talk to the crewmen. I can’t stick it here much longer with only Grandfather and my sister Katla for company.”

  “Old Long-Jaws isn’t a bad sort.”

  “I suppose not, though I never seem to profit from any of his advice.”

  “I can’t say as much for your sister….”

  “God, how I want to leave this island! In my own ship or another’s, it wouldn’t matter, only to be gone.”

  He spoke with such sudden passion that it made me sit up and look at him. But I understood. It was something we shared. Just as I had, so had Kalf a viking father, the only difference being that, while mine lived on as a squeaking ghost, his was gloriously dead.

  Flosi Hoskuldsson had been a fierce pirate, the owner of two sleek dragons, and had gone on many a foray in Irish waters. In 1014 he joined the army of King Sigtrygg Silk-Beard of Dublin in his war against the Irish rebel, Brian Boru. Things turned out not as they wished. At a place called Clontarf, the Norse were routed and Flosi, who stood his ground to the last, was taken prisoner.

  It was told later, by men who got away, how the Irish slit his belly and marched him round and round a tree until his guts were all unwound. Still he had smiled, they said, up to the very end.

  Flosi had been Hoskuld’s last child and his favorite. Four other children and his wife had all been carried off by fever years before. When word was brought to him of his son’s death, the old man shut himself up in his bed-closet without food or drink for five days and never afterwards would speak Flosi’s name or allow it to be spoken in his presence. Flosi’s wife, who was pregnant at the time, came to live with him, and there she was delivered of Kalf and his twin sister Katla—dying in the process.

  “Grandfather will never let me go,” Kalf said bitterly. “Whenever I bring it up, he turns his face to the wall and reminds me that I’m his eyes. But it’s not so. Katla can lead him as well as I. The truth is, he’s afraid that someday they’ll come and tell him I’m dead. But, One-Eyed Odin, what sort of a life do I have here? One day I will sail away and not come back, I swear it.”

  “Kalf Slender-Leg, one day I’ll go with you.”

  Just for a moment, we looked in each other’s eyes and understood why we were friends.

  The sun touched the distant hills, where it would hang throughout the endless day-night, and our stomachs told us it was dinnertime. Tying the moorhens to our belts and whistling up the dog, we turned our steps toward Hoskuldsstead.

  †

  By the time we got there, the hall was packed with Hoskuld’s people—his tenants, his hirelings, his thralls, and an assortment of poor relations, whom he fed from his table. Long boards were set up on trestles and heaped with all the good things his farm provided. There were pickled eggs and bowls of skyr, steaming pans of flatbread, fermented shark, boiled mutton, beef, swan, and, an especial delicacy, the head of the sheep, carefully singed. Hoskuld himself was directing his servants to pour out the mead, made from English honey. At home we drank mead seldom, and this was a treat for us.

  “I am not a rich man.” Hoskuld addressed the
room in his deep voice. (He was, in fact, a very rich man by our standards.) “Nor a traveled one—being not robust enough for the seafaring life. All the same I know how men live in the wide world. They drink this precious stuff, and so shall you, down to the humblest of you, for neither am I a niggardly man.” From his high-seat he beamed complacently at all the gathered company.

  Kalf and I slid onto the wall-bench next to Gunnar and Vigdis.

  “Ah.” Hoskuld squinted at us down the table. “Are the young dogs back? And have you had good hunting?” Katla, my dear, pour your kinsman’s mead, there’s a good girl.”

  How utterly different from Kalf was his twin. A hatchet-faced girl, plain as a turnip, and with a sour disposition to boot. Well-dowered though she was, she had no suitors. Tonight she was especially brusque in pouring my drink and raised an arrogant eyebrow at me. What’s this about? I wondered, and then it struck me that it was Gudrun’s death. As if Katla were saying, I’m not pretty, but I’m alive. The wretched girl!

  “Thank you, Katla Thin-Hair,” I said coolly, coining her nickname on the spot and seeing her stiffen with anger. Kalf snorted in his cup.

  For a while then, there were only the sounds of hungry folk eating—or, in the case of my father, drinking, for I noticed he barely touched the dishes, though he honored the mead cask again and again. At last, when our bellies were full, we washed our soiled hands and Hoskuld signaled for the boards to be cleared and hoisted to the rafters. We settled down now to the evening’s real business.

  This was the moment I’d been waiting for. With a tremor of nervousness and a prayer to Odin, god of poets, I begged my uncle’s permission to recite a poem.

  I had labored over this creation of mine during many a long winter’s night, saying nothing about it to anyone, intending it for this very gathering. Its title was The Slaying of Brand Hrutsson. It’s a poor warrior, I told myself, who can’t sing his own praises in passable verse, and I’ve been better taught than most my age.

  It was an ambitious affair, done in the high skaldic style that my father was a master of, full of complicated word-play and ornamented with every obscure kenning I could remember or devise. The fight was a helm-storm. I, the victor, was wolf-crammer and crow-fattener. My battered sword was a wound-snake, and even the whale around which we fought made an appearance as mountain of the sea-god’s meadow.

  What a magical thing is poetry that can take a brawl between two clumsy farm boys and clothe it with ancient splendor.

  My poem rose to a climax, and died away in a keening lament for Gudrun Night-Sun. I stood still, with my eyes lowered, not daring to breathe.

  There was a moment’s silence, followed by an explosion of stamping and pounding all across the room, from the hirelings in the back to Kalf and Gunnar at my elbow, who jumped up and let out piercing yells. My mother, too, was deeply moved, sitting silent and erect with a tear stealing from the corner of her eye.

  Yet the eyes I wanted most to read were veiled. Had something flashed there for an instant, or was it only a trick of the firelight? My father sat impassive, his hands fooling with his knife and stick. He might have been alone in the room.

  My uncle, on the other hand, seemed positively pained.

  “I am not a poetical sort of man, nephew, and have nothing to say about wound-snakes and such, all very fine, I’m sure. But I am a legal man, and I tell you plain that the occasion for this poem of yours is very, very much to be regretted.”

  “Which brings us,” said Gunnar, “to the subject.”

  “So it does.”

  Hoskuld Long-Jaws, sallow-skinned and saturnine, leaned back in his seat with his eyes half closed and the tips of his long fingers pressed together under his beaky nose, every inch the lawyer. To me he looked like nothing so much as a large, ancient, and dusty bird.

  He continued in this way for a full minute, regarding us solemnly, and ruminating before he spoke again. “The trouble, you see, is that you’ve killed the wrong man.”

  My mother looked at him horror-stricken. Gunnar and I jumped up from our seats. Unperturbed, Hoskuld continued in his precise lawyer’s way.

  “It isn’t simply the lack of witnesses to Gudrun’s death—that’s to be expected. But has Strife-Hrut, to our knowledge, ever bothered to deny a killing before, even a cowardly one like this? Did he not brag all over the district when he burnt up Illugi the Silent in his house, though women and children died in that fire? And then there’s the matter of Brand and Mord the next day—as young Odd has just been good enough to remind us—miles from home with only a couple of hirelings for protection? Men who are conscious of provoking a feud are surely more careful than that.”

  Gunnar shot me a worried look.

  “No, my friends,” Hoskuld summed up, “it just won’t wash.”

  “Who, then, Uncle?” asked Gunnar angrily.

  “Upon my soul, nephew, the countryside is full of wandering ruffians. Things like this happen every day. You would have considered it yourselves if you hadn’t let this fellow Hrut prey on your minds so.”

  “But slaughtering the sheep?” I said. “That was no part of a casual rape and killing.”

  Yes, Hoskuld conceded, there was that. We might never know for sure. But it didn’t signify against all the rest, and no jury, he pronounced with finality, would believe our charge.

  We sank down, crushed, stunned. My beautiful verses lay in ruins.

  “Come, come,” he said with a touch of impatience, “it’s a lawyer’s job to bring out the facts of your case, even those you’d rather not hear.”

  My father, who had not said a word up until now, looked up suddenly from his whittling and said, “Brother-in-law, you have spoken my very own thoughts. No doubt they will get a better hearing from your lips than from mine.” There was malice in his eyes.

  “Thorvald,” cried Hoskuld with feigned delight, “you’ve decided to add your voice to our deliberations. I am relieved. I address myself to you, then, as head of the family.” How slyly he said it; it hadn’t taken him long to see how matters really stood between my parents.

  “Let us come down to cases. Anyone who goes up against Strife-Hrut Ivarsson isn’t likely to wear out many new shirts, as the saying goes, unless he’s willing to make some slight compromises with his honor. Well now, what is our situation? For the murder of his son and the other fellow, Hrut can demand six marks of silver in blood money. A large sum, no doubt, but it would be the easiest way out for you, Thorvald. I, of course, am ready to put at your disposal….”

  “He doesn’t want my silver, you fool. He wants my sons!”

  This outburst brought no change in Hoskuld’s expression, except a slight paling around the nostrils. “Yes, quite. Outlawry. Well, he has the right.”

  “Outlawry,” echoed Jorunn, seizing her brother’s arm in both her hands. “But only for three years, is it not, brother?”

  “That is the lesser outlawry, my dear, awarded for justifiable homicide. But if the jurors believe Odd’s assault on Brand was unprovoked, the plaintiff can demand outlawry for life against both brothers—permanent exile, never to see Iceland again under pain of death.”

  “And,” added Thorvald grimly, “if they haven’t left the country within two weeks after the verdict, the law allows Hrut to kill us all and seize our land for damages. And that, my dear wife,”—he mimicked her brother’s patronizing tone of voice—“that is why he drags us to the Althing. Strife-Hrut will be well repaid for the death of his worthless son by the time he’s done with us.”

  My mother’s shoulders sagged. She looked helplessly from one man to the other.

  “But,” said Hoskuld, “all is not lost. What are lawyers for? Evidence and argument aren’t everything. Dear me, no. Iceland’s laws are complicated and deep—like your poetry, young Odd. There’s always an advantage for the man who knows where to look. Why, I’ve seen suits overthrown by the tiniest flaws—a witness improperly summonsed, a declaration in the wrong form of words. Oh, there are endless
possibilities.”

  “You waste your breath, lawyer,” sneered my father. “You forget I was a godi once. I know how it’s done. Money, force, and friends, Hoskuld. Money, force, and friends—without those your piddling lawyer’s tricks aren’t worth a bite from a mare’s backside. Now, Hrut has money, hasn’t he? And force is his nature, is it not? And we know, brother-in-law, who his friends are, don’t we?”

  “Do we?” Hoskuld’s eyes narrowed. “Who?”

  “Your accursed Christmen, that’s who! Those wolves who have circled me these thirty years, contriving against me, waiting for their chance to strike home. Isn’t he one of you? Isn’t Hrut a Christman? You know he is, brother-in-law. And they’ll all come together against me now!”

  He hacked so hard at his stick I feared he would take his thumb off.

  Now it was out in the open and Hoskuld was so angry he could hardly speak. “And I?” he sputtered, “and your own wife, you sorry man, are we plotting against you? You’ve driven yourself mad with religion, Thorvald. I swear you spend more hours in the day brooding about Jesus Christ than any of us Christmen do. Yes, Hrut has friends among the godis. He’s a merchant, he lends them money when they’re short. Only that. But I, too, have friends, and, if it comes to that, money—which, God help me, I wouldn’t spend for your stinking heathen hide but only to save my sister’s children. Now say no more to me about religion.”

  “But that’s the heart of it! Why else does the high-and-mighty Snorri of Helgafel hate me?”

  “Hates you, does he? Well, we mustn’t be too hard on poor Snorri for that!”

  They were both half out of their seats, glaring at each other across the table. Hoskuld, I imagine, couldn’t see clearly the expression on my father’s face, but I could. And I saw his knuckles whiten on the hilt of his knife.

  “Gunnar, sing!” I cried. The gods alone know what put it into my mind.

  My brother stared at me perplexed for an instant and then understood. He only knew one song, Finnbogi’s Daughter, which he always sang with spirit—though without a noticeable melody. He roared out the first line, and I came in on the second, both of us pounding the floor with our feet. Then Kalf added his voice, and so did the others in the back of the hall, stamping and shouting lustily.