Odin’s Child

by Bruce Macbain

  “You shame me, Gunnar.”

  “Sit,” he hissed, keeping his voice low. “Sit down and cool your head. I only ask that we not have the hall a bloody shambles and you laid up with a cracked skull or worse the day before we sail. They are six fighting men to our two, and despite Skidi’s pretty speech, there is precious little right now keeping them in their place. Now, don’t sulk. Just clear the fumes from your head, and turn your thoughts to something more useful than Morag’s pretty ass, because we do have things to talk about.”

  Sounds of merriment swelled again from the thralls’ benches as the ale flowed. Gunnar made me sit beside him and began another enthusiastic speech on how we would make a new home in Vinland.

  In my miserable state of mind, I was only half listening to him.

  The thuck that rattled the door might have been just the rap of a heavy fist, but it roused me from my stupor. While the others looked up curiously, I went and put my hand on the latch and stood there a moment, not breathing.

  I’d never thought I had the second sight, or ever wished to, but at that moment I knew, as certainly as I have ever known anything, what I would see when I opened that door. Knew it and welcomed it. A chance to die, sword in hand!

  I flung the door open. A spear quivered in it. I looked up at the face of Strife-Hrut.

  “Young Odd Thorvaldsson,” he said with mock politeness, “how pleased I am to find you at home. And your brother, too? Where is he? Not gone, I hope? Ah, then I’m not too late.”

  Gunnar stood beside me in the doorway. Jorunn and Vigdis peered between our heads.

  Hrut sat his horse a dozen paces away, flanked by a line of mounted men. All of them wore visored helmets. But nothing could conceal the bushy whiskers or the enormous girth of the man on Hrut’s left.

  In a steady voice my brother said, “Hrut Ivarsson, the two weeks allowed us by the law are not yet up. This is treachery.”

  “Treachery?” Hrut cried. “No, young peacock, it would be ‘treachery’ if you was to get away with your lives after killing my boy. Is it true your father’s died, damn his eyes? Your runaway thrall’s been telling it all over the countryside.” He turned toward the big man on his left. “The old bear’s cheated you, Godi but by Christ, the cubs won’t do the same to me!”

  Snorri, of course! Not in command of this outrage—oh, far too upright for that—but willing to be a spectator of it. So much for the laws of Iceland.

  “Their exile doesn’t satisfy you, you pig-faced man?” shouted Jorunn behind us.

  “That it don’t, Housewife. What will satisfy me is to cut these two boys of yours meat from bone and nail their heads up to my hall door, as I should have done before now. Now then, sons of Thorvald, look to yourselves!”

  Gunnar leapt back, pulling us with him, and barred the door. With a smile on his handsome lips, he put his back against it. “Well, brother Odd, our corpses will feed the Iceland crows and not the Vinland ones after all. I think that suits you better?”

  “If only they feast on Hrut’s eyes too!”

  He threw an arm round my neck and laughed. “So they may, brother! We’ve men enough here to give ’em a fight. We may live to see another day yet. Would you sail away happy then?”

  “Never happier than I am at this minute, Gunnar!”

  He was my brother again.

  Outside, fifty throats raised the battle cry. The door shook under the blows of axes. Gunnar and I shouted orders: “Vigdis, get the baby … Get the women in the back … Mother, bolt the stable door … Skidi, Aelfric, you others, arm yourselves, hurry!”

  I snatched our shields down from the wall, tossing one to Gunnar with his sword. The door planks shivered, and two men burst through, their shields over their heads.

  Gunnar and I faced them side by side. I caught mine with a backhand cut under the shield that sliced through his right leg at the knee. He hadn’t hit the floor before another man leapt over him and thrust at me with a spear held low, aiming for my balls. I leaned to the right, and as we collided, drove my shield into his face, sending him reeling backward.

  On my left, Gunnar slashed about him like a whirlwind. Two men went down, howling. A third turned to get away, and my brother, seeing him, cried, “Here I am, murderer, strike!” The fellow turned back, and it was Mord Hrutsson. Gunnar let out a yell and leapt for him, but caught his foot on the body of a dead man. As he lurched forward, Mord held out his barbed spear, bracing the butt of it on the floor. Its long blade went into Gunnar’s belly right up to the crosspiece. I aimed a blow at Mord’s arm and severed it at the elbow. Kicking him out of the way, I threw my shield over Gunnar while Jorunn dragged him away by the heels.

  Such a battle-rage fell upon me then as I had never felt before. My war cry echoed in my ears, and Neck-Biter’s steel tongue wove back and forth before my eyes. It cut bone with every stroke and men went down before it, screaming.

  My mother, leaving Gunnar in his wife’s arms, now stood beside me. Gripping an axe in her big fists, she brought it whistling down on shields and heads and wherever she struck, the blood flew up like sea-spray.

  Behind me I heard Gunnar order Vigdis to draw the spear out and I heard him groan. The barbed blade took big pieces of his flesh with it. Holding his guts in one hand and his sword in the other, he stumbled back into the fight.

  In the narrow space before the door, our attackers could not come at us all at once. Still, the fighting was hot. Hacking, stabbing, shoving, we drove them back a step at a time. The floor was slippery with blood. Men lay groaning everywhere. I had wounds on my right arm, my head, and my legs—though none were mortal. Incredibly, Gunnar was still on his feet, still hacking and thrusting, while the blood leaked out of him like water from an old bucket.

  Our only advantage was that these men were not fighting to defend their homes. Their attack faltered. One man lost his nerve and tried to push his way back through the door. That was all the others needed to make them turn tail.

  As the last of them cleared the doorway, we upended a table to barricade it. Behind it, Gunnar sank to his knees. He was finished.

  Meanwhile, our thralls had pulled down the remaining arms that lined the walls and handed them round, but although they shouted and waved their swords about, not one had stepped into the blood-storm alongside us.

  Then one of them cried, “The roof!”

  Over our heads Hrut’s men were hacking at the sod, prying clumps of it loose from the rafters. There a man crouched above it, one foot planted on each side, throwing the sod away behind him. I snatched a spear from the floor and sent it straight up, catching him between the legs. He screamed and fell backwards. But in other places, too, they were breaking through.

  From outside came Hrut’s voice crying, “The heathens will burn in the next world, roast ’em in this one, too!”

  Torches were tossed up to the men above, who began to put them to the bare rafters.

  “Not fire!” Gunnar whispered. Pulling himself up to where there was a little space between the table top and the doorway, he put his mouth to it and called, “In Christ’s name let us send out the women and children!”

  “Don’t name Christ to us, Troll-brat!” came Hrut’s voice back. But another voice—surely Snorri’s—commanded, “Send ’em out then, damn you, we’ll burn no babies here.”

  “Vigdis,” called Gunnar faintly. She ran to him, clutching their baby. “You have a son to raise …. Tell him who I was.”

  “Husband, no!”

  “Obey me. Get out!”

  When she didn’t move, he appealed to me with his eyes. Shouldering the table aside, I pushed her out, though she screamed and tried to claw my face. Two of Hrut’s men went for her, both at once.

  “Odd, behind you!” Morag’s voice. Then a fist like a beam end struck me between the shoulders. Aelfric’s face, twisted with hate, looked into mine and snarled, “Burn, Master!” He shoved past me, out the door, dragging Morag behind him. Behind them tumbled all the rest, even Skidi, fl
inging their arms away in a mad rush to get out the door.

  You may say they would have bolted anyway. You may say that if they had stayed to fight, we were still too few to save ourselves. You may say what you like. I lay against the doorway and groaned, “I have done this.”

  Now the rafters were a mass of flame. Falling sparks ignited the straw that covered the floor. Smoke poured into the room through the cracks in the wall panels. Seconds later, the sweating wood exploded in sheets of fire. Fear, deep and unreasoning, gripped me.

  Here stood Jorunn Ship-Breast in the middle of the room, swaying on her feet, still clutching the axe, her bare arms bloody to the elbows, and her dress clinging damply to her side where a blade had pierced her.

  “Run!” I screamed, but she was past hearing. With the flames leaping up around her and her hair flying loose in the cluttered wind, she seemed to me like Brynhilde in the ancient lays, lusting for death. Her lips formed words, but the roar of the flame carried them away.

  As I went toward her, a flaming timber cracked overhead and struck her to the ground. I wrestled with it while the flames licked my hands, and nearly had her free when her hair began to burn, and I shrank back.

  Nearby lay Gunnar doubled over, his handsome face all staring eyes and twisted mouth. But still the lips managed a smile. “Fate’s a trickster, eh, Tangle-Hair? Now, get away if you can—out through the stable….”

  “I can’t leave you.”

  “Brother, one of us must live for vengeance. Promise me—”

  “Yes, all right, Gunnar, yes.”

  But the door to the stable was aflame. I could hear the horses on the other side pounding the walls with their hoofs. There was no escape that way. And I didn’t seek one. I didn’t want to survive this slaughter that I’d brought upon us. This son of Thorvald would not run away.

  Gunnar’s fingers clutched at my shirt. “Look for me one day, Tangle-Hair, in Valhalla or in Hel.”

  “Sooner than you think, brother,” I answered. “Don’t be angry with me.”

  The fingers tightened in a spasm, then uncurled, leaving bloody prints.

  Handsome Gunnar with your brave pointed beard. I rolled him on his back, pulling his blood-soaked tunic over his thighs and putting his legs together so that his body would not be found indecent. Then I stretched myself out beside him.

  Against the command of every pleading nerve, I willed myself not to move. Over my head the ridge beam groaned and sagged.

  “Now, Brother!” I cried aloud, waiting for it to fall and crush out my life. Instead, only a rain of embers showered down on me.

  But this was the end of my little courage.

  In terror, I leapt up to beat the glowing scraps from my face and hair. Oh, just let me get away! Let Gunnar bleed out his life a hundred times over, let my mother’s long hair smoke and flame, let dishonor follow me to the ends of the earth. Only let me get out of here!

  With my cloak over my head, I plunged through the smoky inferno of our house to the rear wall where the hole in the wall still gaped open. But there was no escape this way, either. Only this morning Skidi and I had filled in the outside with fresh cut sods to an arm’s length before Gunnar’s arrival distracted me from it. I told Skidi to finish the job, but how much more had he done?

  I crouched before the opening, paralyzed with fear. I knew I would suffocate long before I broke through to the outside, or else the wall would collapse and bury me alive. But the heat in the room was searing and I could smell my crisping hair. I had no choice. Throwing my sword ahead of me, I plunged after it into the mouth of the tunnel.

  We had made the space wide enough for Thorvald’s shoulders, but mine were nearly as broad. I could get no purchase with my elbows or knees. Digging my fingers into the dirt and wriggling like a snake on my belly, I inched forward.

  I got to the barrier where a shower of loose soil filled my mouth and nostrils. I lay on my side, working my sword into the dirt, jerking the blade this way and that, but a mountain sat on my chest and the blood pounded in my ears. I could move neither forward nor back. My feet! The flames licked at my toes. I squeezed forward with all my might but couldn’t draw them away from the fire. In a frenzy, I began again to stab at the dirt with my sword point, heedless of how the blade cut my fingers. Hopeless. Hopeless…

  A hot wind brushed my fingertips. I braced myself and pushed with the last of my strength. My head burst through a shower of dirt into the acrid air. I was out!

  I huddled, retching and trembling, at the foot of the wall.

  Hrut’s men clustered around the front of the house, expecting us to make a sally there. No one saw me crouching in the back. I rolled through the pall of smoke and cinders down the embankment to the river, and from scorching heat passed to shocking cold. Forcing my head under, I wriggled along the shallow bottom to the little islet that lay mid-stream. Coming up for one gulp of air, I dived again and worked around to the far side. I dragged my body, numb as a stone, onto the bank behind a clump of sedge and lay there gasping.

  With the last of my strength, I crawled to where I could look back through the parted grass and see our house, just as the roof collapsed in a cloud of sparks that whirled up like a thousand fireflies into the blue midnight sky. Far away, I heard Hrut’s men shout their victory cry.

  After that, I heard no more.

  12

  Stig No-One’s-Son

  Somewhere beyond thought, a monotonous halting rhythm throbbed in my bones. My eyes fluttered open, showing me two black and bloody hands dancing at the ends of ragged sleeves, while, miles below them, the pebbled ground lurched past. The odor of sheepskin and horse’s sweat was in my nostrils, ropes ran across my back, cutting into my flesh. In an instant I was awake and screaming, my head bursting with the weight of my blood, my skin on fire.

  “Sst!” A hand seized me roughly by the hair, pulling my head back, and another hand covered my mouth.

  I struggled until the darkness rolled over me again, leaving once more only the distant awareness of that jolting rhythm.

  †

  My delirium continued, so they told me, for a day and a night. At times, I was faintly aware of faces swimming above me—my uncle’s mournful eyes, Katla Thin-Hair’s sharp nose, and the ugly face of a man who watched me without emotion—though I had the feeling that his hands touched me skillfully and eased my pain. But more constantly than all of them, I saw the anxious face of Kalf Slender-Leg.

  Sometime on the second day I sat up suddenly.

  “Grandfather!”

  “Heh? Kalf? Oh, God in Heaven! Be still, dear boy. Just lie still. Katla, the posset, hurry!” Hoskuld rushed over to me. His shaking hand held the warm milk and wine to my lips, pouring most of it down my cheek.

  “Uncle Hoskuld?” My voice rasped in my throat.

  “Yes, I’m here. Don’t try to talk, dear boy. Drink it all down. There.”

  “How did I get here?”

  “We found you in the long grass on the island—or rather, Kalf did with his eagle eye.

  “How…?”

  “Lie still, now. You really must. Kalf, tell him he must.”

  I let him push me back on the mound of fleeces they had heaped around me.

  “Oh, to see you alive, dear boy! You’ve got young Kalf here to thank for it. It was the morning, you see, that Gunnar visited us with his sad news of Thorvald dying and all of you leaving. After he left, I took to my bed. I confess, I lay in my bed moaning and weeping for half the day, a thing I have not done since—well …” Since the death of Flosi, his son, he had started to say. “For I’m not an unfeeling sort of man, not a stone, by God, not a tree stump!

  “But Kalf made me ashamed of myself, saying it wasn’t right to let kinsmen go away without a proper farewell. It was God, of course, who made you say that, Kalf, seeing as how things turned out. So the two of us set out on horseback after Gunnar.”

  “I saw the smoke a long way off,” Kalf broke in. “‘By Odin’s crow,’ said I, ‘they�
��re being murdered!’ and I galloped to the brow of the ridge from where I could see your house. I wasn’t there a minute when I saw you crawl up onto the island. By the time Grandfather and I got to you, you were stiff and stony cold. I thought sure you were dead.”

  Hoskuld resumed, “I put my ear to your lips and could feel a little breath stirring. ‘Not dead yet,’ said I, ‘but as good as, if Hrut searches for his body and doesn’t find it.’ Right away I saw what was to be done. I’m a cunning man when need be. We watched and waited on that island for hours until the fire was nearly burned out, chaffing your poor arms and legs all the while to warm ’em up. You don’t remember it at all? Well, by that time, the lot of them were drunk, helping themselves to what was left in your brew-house. Then I took that heathen medal from off your neck, that cursed Thor’s hammer, for I recollected how Snorri had fingered it….”

  “Snorri was there! I burst out. “I saw him!”

  “Let me tell it now,” said Kalf. “I took the Thor’s hammer with me and waded across the river. I crept up along the bank until I was just by the house. I got in the way you must have gotten out, through that gaping hole in the wall. How it came to be there, I can’t imagine.”

  I explained in a few words.

  Kalf gave a shudder at the thought of Black Thorvald’s draug. “No evil but has some good in it, though,” he said. “Without that hole I don’t know what I would have done. I wriggled in and had a look round until I found a body about your size—one of Hrut’s men. He was so charred I didn’t like to touch him, but I had no choice. I stripped off his sword and jewelry that his friends might recognize him by, blackened his hair with soot, and hung your hammer around his neck.”

  “But he didn’t have my face.”

  “He hardly had a face at all. Then it was just a matter of getting you home. You did give us a scare once, when you woke up screaming before we were out of earshot.”

  “Kalf Slender-Leg,” I said, “you’re the bravest fellow in all the world. Ask me for my life whenever you need it.”