Odin’s Child

by Bruce Macbain

  “No, never found.”

  “Ahh.”

  It was commonly known that Olaf’s body had vanished from the field—likewise, strangely enough, the body of his giant half-brother Harald. And this mystery only added a further proof to the arguments for his saintliness.

  “Angels—God’s Valkyries—” they would say, nodding sagely, “have carried him off to Heaven’s mead hall where he eats and drinks with Charlemagne, brave Saint George, and all the rest of Christ’s warriors.”

  I listened to this drivel with my secret locked tight behind my teeth. ‘Confide in one’, the old saying goes, ‘never in two. Confide in three and the whole world knows.’ I decided to confide in none. A king’s body is a dread thing, heavy with magic. If good men like Thorgils could kill to keep it hidden, what might the Danes not do to find it and destroy it? As long as I alone knew Olaf’s secret, it could harm no one else. And there was another thing, too, that helped to seal my lips. I feared Thorgils’ ghost if I should betray him. That man had been almost too much for me in the flesh.

  But all the same the secret weighed heavily on me.

  †

  Though he continued to live in a brothel, Kalf made his corner of it into a place that was his alone—where visitors found themselves speaking softly. When the girls offered to sleep with him (this was when the hip had healed as much as it ever would), he only shook his head and smiled kindly. They went away feeling that he had somehow favored them more than if he had taken them to his bed.

  He and I, as I have said, rarely spoke, though sometimes he cast long, sorrowful looks at me. They made me so uncomfortable I would leave the room to escape them. Stig, Bergthora, Starkad, and some others asked me what was wrong between us. I told them they were only imagining things.

  †

  Winter came on. We passed the brief twilight days and long nights huddled close to the hearth, while the wind roared along the roof and hammered at the walls. Kalf took his first steps, dragging himself up and down the hall, on a crutch that Stig made him, until the sweat, even in that ice-cold room, ran down his face. He was also learning to read. Not runes, but the Latin of the Christmen. Deacon Poppo became a regular visitor to the inn—generally, as I observed, around supper time—and they would crouch together mumbling over their page for an hour or more each night.

  I, with nothing to do but eat and drink, felt restless and out of sorts. And more and more, as the days went by, I wondered what I ought to do with myself come spring. I and my crew had made no plans beyond the winter. Should we be honest merchants or should we turn viking? Sail north, south, east, or west? I knew little of what lay beyond the horizon in any direction. Only one thing was fixed in my mind: I would not go home again just to be an outlaw in my own land. The time to settle accounts with Hrut and Snorri was not yet. But in my heart, I began to fear it would never come.

  †

  Midwinter’s Day arrived, which the Christmen, just as we ‘heathen’ do, celebrate with bonfires, dancing, and games. They call it Saint Lucy’s Day. Stuf and Otkel roused me early in the morning and asked me if I would go with them to the banks of the Nid, where a game of ball was starting up. My shoulder by now, had repaired itself; there were no broken bones, and I was happy to accompany them.

  The air was snapping cold and the townspeople, all bundled to the eyes in fur robes and hats, had built fires along the riverbank and set up benches in front of them where they sat, holding mugs of hot ale in mittened hands and cheering the young men out on the ice.

  “If only we had skates and clubs,” Stuf complained, “we’d show them how Iceland boys play the game.”

  It wasn’t long, though, before the benches began to fill up with injured players, as always happens in a game of ball, and we were able to borrow what we needed to join the game. We tied on the horse bone skates, winding the leather thongs tight around our ankles, and, gripping our clubs like battle-axes, skated out to enlist on the side that seemed to be getting the worst of it.

  Crack! The wooden ball skittered across the ice with all of us after it. Bodies collided in bone-crunching melees, and blows were aimed at heads and knees as often as at the ball. I blocked for Otkel, sending two fellows careening off the ice, and he put the ball neatly across their line for a goal. The spectators cheered, and our teammates clapped us on the back. My muscles grew warm, my face glowed, and for a time, I emptied my mind of home, of Kalf, of everything except the whizzing ball and the pounding of my blood.

  Before long, though—so soft and lazy had I grown during these idle weeks—I wanted a rest. Leaving my two friends to carry on, I glided off the ice toward one of the bonfires, where I saw a bench that was nearly empty.

  Only after I’d sat for a bit, catching my breath and feeling the fire toast my back, did I give attention to the solitary figure who sat, wrapped in an enormous blanket, at the farther end.

  “I see you have no skates or club, friend,” I said. “Use these if you like, I’ve had enough exercise for a while.”

  He turned slowly towards me, showing a great flat moon of a face in which drooping eyes, a nose like a knob, and a round pink mouth seemed all too small and arranged too closely together. His eyebrows met in the middle. He was bareheaded, and his shaggy hair caught my eye, for it was entirely gray, although his face was not old. I also had the impression that his neck was about as thick as my thigh.

  He gave me a doleful look and shook his head.

  “Have you hurt yourself, then?” I asked. “They play rough here, for a fact.”

  No, he replied, he wasn’t injured. When he spoke, his voice was as soft as if a baby lay sleeping between us.

  “Then why not join in? You look sturdy enough for the rough and tumble.”

  His face reddened and he hesitated before he said, “Neither side will let the other choose me. It’s always like this.”

  “Why,” I laughed, “do you cheat?”

  “I kill.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  Another pause. Then with a shrug he unfolded his arms, letting the blanket fall open, exposing his chest to me.

  “You see how it is,” he murmured. “I wear the wolf skin shirt.”

  I didn’t see. “Good-looking pelt,” I said, at a loss. “Skin ‘im yourself?”

  His little bow mouth now curved into a shy smile. “Where do you hail from, friend, that you’ve never heard tell of the berserkers?”

  Suddenly, I had trouble breathing.

  “Don’t stare at me, stranger, it makes me uneasy.”

  Dropping my eyes at once, I made a sign with my fingers behind my back to ward off evil.

  Pulling the blanket back around his shoulders, he said in his mild voice, “It’s how I’m made. Not so different from other men, except—you know—when it’s all blood and confusion.”

  “As in a game of ball?”

  “Yes.”

  “Or a battle?”

  “Oh, yes, always in a battle. Then I do feel the prick of Odin’s spear, and—I kill,” he said simply, “anything in my path.”

  And so saying, he turned on me a look full of puzzlement, as though every time he considered the thing, he felt lost again in wonder at the mystery of himself.

  Curiosity, as usual with me, got the upper hand. Despite his warning, I stared hard at him—at his brows, his cheekbones, the curve of his jaw—trying to discover beneath the skin, other brows and bones and other teeth. Oh, it isn’t possible, I thought, not this mild fellow.

  Seeing him grow restless under my gaze, I said quickly, “Forgive me, friend, but I thought the wild warriors of Odin had vanished years ago. I remember that my father, who knew many things, mentioned them once as creatures of the distant past.”

  He looked grieved to have to contradict my father, who knew many things. “You will find a few of us still, in Sweden.”

  Sweden! “Tell me your history, friend,” I said tight-voiced, “it’s no idle question.”

  “If you like. I was born on the shores of La
ke Malar and my parents named me Glum. My childhood was nothing special until I reached the age of thirteen. It was then that I began to suffer from headache and to be troubled by dreams in which I ran through woods and fields all the night long, and in the morning I would wake up exhausted. One day, it happened that a neighbor boy wanted to fight me, as boys will. I broke his neck and slaughtered his friends as well. They say I cried Odin’s name. And so my father, taking it for a sign, brought me to Uppsala, where the great temple is. There the priest touched me with the sacred spear, Gungnir, and I chose the wolf to be my animal because it seemed to me that I entered the wolf’s body when I slept.”

  “In real truth, are you a varg, a shape-shifter, as old stories tell of?”

  Again that puzzled look.

  “Oh, yes. I have eaten the wolf’s heart, I wear the wolf’s shirt. I am a wolf. Most of us are wolves, though some,” he added in the same thoughtful manner, “are bears. In olden times, we were honored for it. Kings, you may know, kept troops of berserkers, treating them to the best of everything, and placing them in the front rank of their armies. Oh, to have lived in those days! Our present king worships the White Christ and like your Olaf, has no love for men like me.”

  “And so,” I said, “you thought to try your luck on this side of the Keel?” I knew the answer before he spoke.

  Yes, he confessed, he had joined Olaf’s ragtag army and was one of that mob of heathens who went over to the enemy rather than be touched by the priests’ water. This creature alone, I supposed, could have been worth fifty men to us. One question remained. I feared to ask it.

  “I wonder,” I said carelessly, looking away from him, “what you recall of the battle. I mean after you became a … you know … a…”

  “A wolf?”

  “Yes.”

  “Nothing.”

  “Not a face, perhaps?”

  “No, nothing. That’s the way of it.”

  “Ah.”

  We were silent for a bit until he gave a little cough and asked with a voice full of concern, “You were there?”

  “Yes, actually, I was.”

  “And did you … Did I…?”

  “It’s no matter. Please forget I asked. Now,” I said to change the subject, “what keeps you still in Norway?”

  “Oh, well,” he looked shamefaced, “after the battle, I joined Jarl Thorir’s hird. He was pleased to have me, for all that he’s a Christman. But his men, when they learned what I was, refused to eat or sleep with me, and so I was discharged. It’s too late in the year now to walk home. There’s nothing to do but sit here and wait for the snow to melt in the passes.”

  “And how are you living meanwhile?”

  Ake, the shipwright, he replied, was letting him sleep in his ship shed in return for cutting trees and trimming them up into masts. It served to keep his axe arm limber but was no proper work for such a man as himself. “It’s hard,” he finished with a sigh, “to be shunned only for being what fate has made you.”

  Meanwhile, not far from where we sat, a brawl had erupted on the ice and the lads were going at it with clubs and fists while the spectators shouted encouragement from the sidelines. I was just going to speak again when I saw the berserker hunch forward on the bench, his eyes riveted on the struggling figures and his thick fingers gripping his knees.

  “Odd Tangle-Hair, there you are!” I whirled round to see Stig and Bergthora crunching toward me through the snow. “Hullo,” she sang out. “We’re off to the square for the dancing. Everyone’s there. Will you come?”

  “Uh, Bergthora don’t—”

  She halted a few steps away to warm herself at the fire. Stig, beside her, cast an inquiring eye on Glum’s broad back, which even under the blanket wrap was visibly heaving.

  “Friend of yours?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Let him come, too, if he likes,” said Bergthora.

  The berserker gave no sign that he even heard us. On the ice, the spectators now had joined in the brawl. A couple of injured men were running our way holding bloodied heads. I had to do something. Without giving myself time for second thoughts, I jumped up and planted myself squarely in front of Glum, blocking his view of the river. Face to face with him, I saw his appearance undergo an indescribable change.

  Like a man straining to lift a boulder, his skin was purplish, his nostrils flared, and the veins stood out like ropes in his neck. His lower jaw was thrust forward and the lips drawn down and back, exposing long teeth. Worst of all were his eyes, which a minute ago had been so mild and sad. They were wide, white, and bulging, and they stared with a desperate ferocity.

  There could be no more doubt. It was him—the monster of Stiklestad. I swallowed hard. “Friend Glum,” I said, “I’ve lost interest in watching a game where such babies play that they can’t make room for a man like you. Now, what do you say to going along with these friends of mine?”

  I was ready to run screaming onto the ice if he made a grab for me.

  “Yes, come along Glub, or whatever your name is,” urged Bergthora behind him, stamping her feet impatiently. “We can’t stop here all day.”

  The berserker blinked.

  The muscles of his face went suddenly slack, the brow unfurrowed, the lips crept back into the semblance of a pink bow. In a matter of seconds he was a wolf no more.

  “Glum,” I said, taking a deep breath, “these are my friends. Glum, here, is a woodcutter by trade.”

  Standing up and turning, he gave them his apologetic smile. “Friends,” he murmured.

  The size of him at full stretch, even though he stooped and hung his head, gave me a turn. He was enormous.

  “Stig,” I warned, “he doesn’t much care for being stared at.” Stig was giving him a cool going over, as only Stig could.

  “I imagine he doesn’t,” he replied thoughtfully, lifting an eyebrow at me. “Well, let’s go.”

  †

  The Lucy festival that year lacked its customary gaiety. Although the pipes and fiddles played, and couples ran up to throw a pinch of incense on the bonfire for health in the coming year, the presence of the Danish Housecarles, helping themselves to the ale and fondling the women, produced a sullen anger you could feel. There were muttered words and hard looks, and here and there scuffles broke out which might have turned at any moment into a general bloodletting. Even Stig was not inclined to cut any wild capers.

  We departed the square before long and walked with dampened spirits, arm in arm, back to the inn.

  Along the way, Stig chaffed Bergthora about the Danes, making her admit that Ogmund had prophesied truly about them, and that Nidaros would never know peace as long as they stayed. To change the subject, she snapped, “Will one of you brave men be so good as to tell that hulking creature to leave us alone?” For Glum, unasked, padded silently behind us, keeping a distance of about ten paces.

  If I had been brave enough, I would certainly have done as she asked, for I did not relish the thought of Kalf coming face to face with the monster that had crippled him. If he should somehow discover Glum’s identity, I would be bound in sworn brotherhood to seek vengeance for him. Not to do so would disgrace me before my men.

  Nor, it seemed, was Stig brave enough. With a knowing glance at me, he advised Bergthora gruffly that our new friend was peaceful as a pig—so long as he was well fed and talked to gently. “Knew a man like him once,” he confided to us in a low voice. “It’s something in the eyes, you know. You never forget it, once you’ve seen it. Good man in a fight, too—when he could remember whose side he was on.”

  Bergthora asked him sharply what in the world he meant by that, but he would say no more.

  †

  During the month of Yule, the ale flowed freer at the inn than at other seasons of the year. The midwinter dancing and the chances it offered of getting their arms around some lassie’s waist brought many men in from the countryside who one never saw at other times of the year, and quite a few of these had found their way
to Karl’s Doom.

  By evening, forty pairs of skis leaned against the icicled wall outside, while inside the hall a merry crowd, most of them strangers to me, called for meat and beer and drank endless toasts to Saint Lucy on her day, and to Bergthora, their generous provider, and to the sun, to cheer him through this longest night of the year.

  After dinner, while the Yule log smoked on the hearth, we chose our drinking partners for the evening and stretched our legs to the fire, sitting in pairs of man and woman, as the custom is; each pair sharing a big horn of the warm, thick ale, and each partner railing good-naturedly at the other for drinking too much or too little, too quickly or too slowly. I sat with Thyri, Stig, of course, with Bergthora.

  Then Kalf hobbled over from his corner to join us, and was only a few steps away when one of the dogs ran between his legs, upsetting him. Before any of us could make a move, Glum bounded from the bench, caught Kalf in his arms, and set him down gently beside him. My heart shrank within me as they looked straight into one another’s eyes. Yet not a flicker of recognition passed between them, not a sign that they had ever met before in less agreeable circumstances.

  On the contrary, there seemed to spring between them a kind of instantaneous sympathy. I never understood it, but it was there from the first moment, and it endured. Whether Kalf’s frailty struck a spark of tenderness in Glum, or whether the sorrowful look in the berserker’s eye touched Kalf—they gazed at each other like fond friends before a word had passed between them. And soon Kalf was showing Glum his whistle, and Glum was trying to fit his huge fingers to the holes and chuckling. I almost laughed myself.

  As the evening wore on, I could not keep from stealing sidelong glances at Glum, the werewolf, the berserker. Not in fear, but in fascination. During the whole night’s conversation, which ranged from curses on the damned bloody Danes, to the weather, to the scarcity of provender and the price of cod, Glum never once opened his mouth, and yet accompanied our talk with an extraordinary dumb show.

  If a man reported that his cow had sickened and heaven only knew what they would do now for milk, Glum frowned and shook his head. If another boasted of a shrewd bit of trading that had turned him a profit, Glum beamed and slapped his knees, and so on through an amazing repertoire of grimaces, shrugs, raised eyebrows, and head-wagging. It was as though, at the center of this strange creature, was a void which could be filled only by an arrangement of bits and pieces borrowed from those around him—an expression, a posture, a tone of voice, a mood—and all of them registered, in their subtlest changes, with an animal’s sensitivity.