Odin’s Child

by Bruce Macbain

  “And just what might your condition be?” said Hogni between his grinding jaws.

  “Why Hogni, I’m an exile, did you not know? Odd Thorvaldsson the Outlaw, I am. Every godi in Iceland wants to drink my blood—all of ’em, truly. If you like, I’ll recite you a poem about it, for I have no little skill in that.”

  Hogni, for answer, hawked loudly and spat over the gunnel. He misjudged the wind, however, and had to wipe the spittle from his eyes, which made me burst out in a loud laugh.

  “Hogni, by the hammer of Thor, let me be your friend. For a man who spits into the wind is his own worst enemy. Ha, ha!”

  There was good-natured chuckling at this, but I … I laughed until I was helpless, I pounded the deck and howled and nudged the others to keep the laughter up. “His own worst enemy, I say—Ho! Gods!” Gradually I realized it was only my own voice that I heard, cracked and piping in the immense silence of the night. And I felt suddenly like a small animal in the dark wood—with wolves in the shadows between the trees.

  “Only a little joke—eh, Hogni? There’s a good fellow.”

  None would look me in the eyes.

  “Enough,” said Stig, getting to his feet. “Time to sleep. I’ll take first watch.”

  With muttered good nights, they crept off to their favorite corners and angles of the ship, leaving me alone—alone in the dark with my Unwelcome Ones, who came to me nightly on the wind’s invisible sigh, who whispered horrid things to me while I slept, who were driving me mad.

  †

  Four days out and the wind veered round and began to blow steadily from the southwest. The sky grew overcast, and the sea turned the color of lead.

  “Dirty weather,” said Stig.

  The squalls hit us with sudden fury, driving the rain in our faces and lashing the sea into heavy swells. We tried at first to hold our course, beating as near to the wind as we dared, and taking turns at the tiller, which fought us till our arms ached. But the wind blew stronger until we had no choice but to shorten sail and let her ride where she wanted.

  Drenched and frozen, we crawled about the streaming deck from handhold to handhold, securing what we could, while great green, foam-streaked seas broke over us, and the ship staggered and heeled over on her beam ends as she wallowed into the troughs. Though we bailed frantically with buckets and helmets, we were near foundering.

  “Throw out the cargo or we’ll sink!” screamed Stig to me over the howl of the wind. “Give the order!”

  “No!”

  “You want to kill us?”

  “It’s my prize. I won’t throw over a penny’s-worth of it.”

  “Odd, do what he says,” begged Kalf.

  “Cowards!” I shrieked into the wind.

  For five days and nights we labored in the gale, while we called on Thor and Jesus and bailed for our lives. I tied my sword to my wrist, lowered myself into the hold, and swore to kill anyone who came near the cargo. They believed me and bailed harder.

  On the sixth day the gale blew itself out. We lay on the deck like spent dogs, weak and wretched; our clothes, our hair, our beards caked with salt, our lips cracked, our skin whipped raw.

  “Stig,” I whispered, “we’re still rich.”

  He turned his face away.

  “Kalf,” I called. He was lying limp and dead-white up against the mast where he had tied himself. “Kalf we’ve been through the worst thing in the world and lived. Heh? Give us a smile.”

  But I was wrong. The worst thing in the world was still to come.

  As the wind died to a whisper and less than a whisper, rags of fog drifted toward us over the flat surface of the sea. Wreathes of fog gathered about the rigging, thick fingers of fog felt along the deck, curling under benches, reaching into corners, twining and winding around our feet, our chests, our faces. Soft mountains of fog rose over us and silent avalanches of fog fell on us. Sea and sky ran together until the whole world shrank to the little circle of our deck. We were swallowed alive by that gray animal in whose belly there is no distinction of night or day, no past and no future, but only the unchanging, unending, unbearable present.

  We could have rowed, but in what direction? Stig’s sunstone was useless now, and Brodd took a grim pleasure in that. We sat shivering, with our arms around our knees, moving little, talking little. Waiting. Every man wrestled with the fear inside him, for all sailors dread the fog.

  But my terror was greater than theirs.

  Willful and alive, the fog explored me, though I shrank against the bulwark and struck at it with my arms. It touched me everywhere, creeping inside my clothes, putting its wet mouth against my skin and sucking out my juices. My teeth chattered, I moaned and shut my eyes for fear of what I might see. They were there—the grisly visitors of my dreams. They plucked at my sleeve with their smoky fingers.

  The first voice to speak was Gunnar’s. You killed me, Brother, meddling with the girl, turning the thralls against us. Look at me, Brother, look at me.

  “I won’t!”

  But I could not help myself. His eyes were dark pools of smoke. His blue lips dripped and ran into his beard.

  Why do you live, Brother, while I am dead?

  “To avenge you,” I croaked. “You told me….”

  Liar! You ran away because you feared the flames. You are not the man to avenge me.

  “But I’ve stolen this ship of Hrut’s.”

  The farther to fly. No, brother, better die now … die now…

  “Go away … please.”

  You ran away, said Gudrun Night-Sun, her white face wrapped in her streaming hair.

  You ran while I burned, said Jorunn, putting up her hands to hide her melting cheeks.

  You’ve always run, boy, and always will, moaned Black Thorvald, his face twisting in grief. Cowardly son of a cowardly father—better die … better die….

  “Don’t say that to me!”

  Behind them, crowded others—all my ancestors, runny-faced and indistinct, ancient men and women with wispy hair floating round their heads, and little round-eyed mites, mewling and piping like the ghosts of birds. And all of them crooning, Come down with us. Oh, come down with us. Better die, Odd Tangle-Hair. Better die….

  “O, Mistress Hel,” I cried, “for pity’s sake take them away!”

  I heard other voices, too, rough, earthy ones.

  “Devil take him!”

  “What’ll we do?”

  “Pitch him overboard, say I.”

  “Aye, if his dead friends want him, for the love of Christ let ’em have him, or else we’ll never see the sun again.”

  So, the living and the dead agreed what I must do, and what could I say against them?

  At last my weary will gave way and I began to weep—whether aloud or to myself, I do not know.

  “Yes, all right. Yes … better to die, to just slip over the side … to sink into the fog and the deep sea.” I struggled up against the bulwark. “Gunnar … Father,” I swung my legs over. “Take me now.” The fog licked my feet, and the black water, invisible beneath it, sucked at the ship. I let go….

  A rope snapped taut around my chest, jerking me backwards. Kalf pinned my arms to my sides, threw me back against the mast, and looped the rope around it.

  “Let me go!” I wailed, but I was too weak to fight. There was surprising strength in those thin arms of his. I sagged against the ropes while helpless tears ran down my cheeks.

  “Stand away from him, boy.” It was Hogni’s snarl. As I faced the prow, they were all behind me, but I knew them by their voices. “Stand away, and we won’t hurt you.”

  But Kalf ducked down, reached into the fo’c’sle, where we stowed the arms, and pulled out his bow and quiver. “I’ll put an arrow through any man who takes a step forward!”

  †

  All six were huddled aft, around the water barrel, from which they never moved, being unwilling to trust each other alone with its dwindling contents. Their shields and spears were all in the fo’c’sle.

>   “I’ve seen him shoot, mates. He can do it.” Stig’s low voice. “Now, young Slender-Leg, you’re a good lad, and be damned if I don’t feel responsible for you to your Grandpa, though that was no part of our bargain.”

  “Was this part of your bargain?”

  “He’s bad luck, boy. You can see that. Now stand away from him.”

  Someone must have moved, for the arrow flew. I heard it strike wood.

  “I mean what I say,” said Kalf. “The next one will stick in your throat.”

  “Why, boy?” Stig again.

  Kalf stared doggedly ahead of him. “I promised Grandfather never to leave his side.”

  After that they kept to their end of the ship. None wanted to be the first to taste Kalf’s arrow.

  Time—if there was such a thing in that gray void—passed. Water slapped against the hull and the mist stirred a little as a breath of wind took us. For a while the men continued to call out to Kalf—bullying, wheedling, tempting him with water. After a time they stopped.

  From the sounding fog my Dead Ones spoke to me still, but I had sunk into a lethargy and answered only with tears and groans. Kalf looked sidelong at me, and quickly looked away. He never spoke to me during all that time, nor I to him.

  More hours, I suppose, crept by. The ship rocked gently, drifting from nowhere to nowhere.

  Kalf’s head began to droop. He shook himself once, and again, then his eyes closed and his fingers on the bow uncurled.

  The scrape of shoes behind me … a rustle of cloth … a breath upon my neck….

  Die, moaned pale Gunnar in my ear.

  “Yes, Brother….”

  Norway AD 1030

  14

  A Doctor of Souls

  But no one dies before his time.

  In that frozen moment when Hogni Hard-mouth—as I later learned—stood behind me with his axe upraised, we heard the cry of a gull, then the crash of surf, then timber grated against stone and everyone but me was flung on his face as the ship scraped bottom, wallowing slantwise onto the strand of an invisible shore.

  In the confusion that followed, Kalf and I were forgotten. The men scrambled past us on the tilting deck and craned over the side to peer into the mist, where the outline of a hill could just be made out. They leapt the gunnel and splashed up the pebbly beach and blundered about like blind men, calling out to each other in excited voices. Kalf untied me and took me by the hand. Obediently, I stumbled after him.

  It is hard to tell the story of the next few hours. The truth is I barely knew where I was or what I did. Much of what follows comes from what Kalf and the others later told me—and I can’t say they troubled to spare my pride.

  The men huddled at the water’s edge and turned to Stig, who picked up a handful of pebbles and studied them in his palm, as if they could speak.

  “I’m glad to be anywhere,” said Starkad, “but I’d be even gladder to know where ‘anywhere’ is.”

  “It was a southerly wind that hit us,” the steersman replied, “and there’s a strong current, too, that sets to the north all up along the Norway coast as far as—well, as far as anyone’s ever gone.”

  “As far as the Edge is what you meant t’say,” growled Brodd. He poked the fog with a blunt finger. “And d’you know what lies out there, you young’uns, or did your elders neglect to teach it to you? It’s the Midgard Worm, in the deeps of ocean, coiled all ‘round the world. The same, they say, as even Thor and Hymir the Giant couldn’t catch when they went fishing for it. And come to speak of giants, they’re as thick as fleas here, as any fool knows.”

  “That may be,” Stig broke in sharply, for he could see that Brodd would frighten the others worse than they were already. “What I know for a fact is that we’ve no place else to go until this fog lifts.”

  The fog. That reminded them of me.

  “Aye,” said Hogni Hard-Mouth, hefting his axe, “and that’ll be as soon as we rid ourselves of our bad luck. Out of my way, young Kalf, you’ll not stop me this time with your little bow and arrow.”

  Kalf put himself between us and appealed to the others.

  “But the smell of death’s on him, lad,” said Starkad, speaking all their minds. “We’ll never prosper as long as he’s among us.”

  “Be fair,” Kalf pleaded. “Has anyone seen these ghosts but him? I don’t know what ails him. Oh, Odd Tangle-Hair, stand up!” I had sunk to my knees and was crying again. “Just wait a little while. The fog may lift yet. Please, he’s my friend.”

  “You deserve a better one,” muttered Stuf.

  “He isn’t like you and me—he feels things more. Stig, give him a chance.”

  Stig gazed away and thought, while Hogni, eager to finish me off, scowled. “All right,” he said finally, “we’ll give the weather another day—I owe that much to old Long-Jaws. But if we’re still fogbound after one more tide rolls in, it’ll be the end for Tangle-Hair. Hogni, put away your axe.”

  “I’ll put it away in his goddamned head!”

  It was only for Kalf’s sake, because they liked him, that the others surrounded Hogni and kept him off me.

  “Now then, back aboard ship,” ordered Stig. “We’ll be safer there.”

  But no, damn them, they weren’t budging. Not after so many days confined in that oaken prison. They’d take their chances on these solid stones, come giants or no.

  So it was agreed. They returned to the ship only to unload their gear and the last of the rations. Then they spread their cloaks out on the shingle and sat down to wait.

  “I do believe she’s thinning,” said Otkel to Stuf.

  “Piss on what you believe,” replied his bosom friend.

  Kalf, for fear I would wander off or try again to kill myself, took away my sword and knife and tied my right wrist to his left one with our two belts looped together. From my own recollection, I can remember thinking that I should warn him lest the ghosts, when they came for me, should take us both, not bothering to untie us. But a great weight seemed to press upon my chest, stifling the words in my throat.

  “Captain,” asked Stuf—meaning, of course, not me but Stig, “You’ll set watches while we sleep?”

  “I will. I’ll have no crowd of giants creeping up on us. They’re sly and quiet fellows, as I’ve heard.” One corner of his mouth turned up in a smile. The cousins laughed a little at this and felt better. Bald Brodd harrumphed and frowned at his feet.

  In spite of Stig’s promise, they were all of them so worn out that soon after finishing a cold and cheerless meal on the stones, they crawled into their skin bags, as near to one another as could be—though keeping a distance from me and Kalf—and were soon asleep.

  I was wearier than any of them, but sleep I could not and would not. While Kalf tossed uneasily at the other end of our tether, I sat still as a stump, my eyes and ears open to the speaking fog—waiting for my death.

  So it was, as the hours crept by, that I alone saw what happened.

  Around me the salt-bleached stones took on lights and shadows. Soon out of the mist crept the rounded hills nearby, and then, very far away and very high up, a gigantic range of mountain peaks appeared, floating in space like a rack of white cloud on a dark horizon. Gradually, as I watched, the whole massive barricade of mountains took shape in the thinning mist, while above them, glowing in the haze like an old coal, hung the sun. In my distempered brain something stirred.

  “Gunnar?” I whispered. “Gunnar? Father?”

  All this time, the faces of my Dead Ones had not left me alone—but when I looked for them now, in the transparent air, they were gone! I cannot describe the feeling of utter desertion that overcame me. I clutched myself and rocked back and forth, repeating through numbed lips, “Come back. Don’t leave me. Where is my death?”

  I had no right, you see, to remain in the world of the living. I was already more than half dead—my ghost tied to my heavy limbs only by a thread. “Oh, Lady Hel,” I moaned, “don’t play such tricks with me.” Twisting my han
ds in an agony of doubt, I rocked back and forth, back and forth.

  It was in this state that I happened to see the band of little people who stole silently toward us from around the curve of the nearest hill.

  Signaling to one another with gestures, they divided and circled to the right and left so as to approach us from both sides at once. When they saw me looking at them, they froze, but when I made no sound, they crept closer.

  Were they the dwarves of old men’s talk, I wondered, for the tallest of them would barely reach my shoulder. But dwarves are rough and bearded folk, while these men were as hairless as babes.

  The band numbered about fifteen and they stood quite close now, studying us out of black slits of eyes and pointing their weapons—bone-tipped harpoons and long, wicked-looking arrows—at our sleeping forms. It appeared to me that they meant to kill us. I put my hands to rest in my lap and smiled at them. My death had come at last.

  One aimed his arrow at my heart and drew it back to his ear. I watched him unblinkingly. But an instant before he would have shot, their pack of mangy dogs made a sudden dash for the remains of our dinner and fell to snarling over it. Our lads awoke in a fright—cursing, rubbing their eyes, and groping for their weapons all at once. Kalf, forgetting that we were attached, leapt to his feet, nearly yanking my arm out of its socket. Starkad, followed by Hogni, ran at them with swords drawn, but Stig roared, “Hold! Strike no blow!”

  For a tense moment we stood this way, face to face. They had the advantage of us in numbers, but it was obvious that they feared our size and our steel blades.

  At last, cautiously, the one who had aimed at me eased off his bowstring, took a step forward, and addressed us in a strangely accented version of our own language.

  “Brave Norsemen,” he began in a reedy voice, “you waste your time here. It is a bad year for the Lapps—bad for the reindeer, bad for the walrus. We have nothing for you. You go away now and tell your king—maybe next year.” He did his best to look apologetic.

  His face was round, brown and smooth as a hickory nut, and his age as likely fifty as thirty. His costume, made all of greasy buckskins, consisted of boots with turned up toes, tight trousers around his little bowed legs, a loose short-skirted coat, and on his head a leather cap with three peaks to it, each pointing in a different direction.