Odin’s Child

by Bruce Macbain

  “Glum’s gone strange,” came someone’s voice from the rear. “He’s mewling like a sick cat and won’t take his hands off his ears.”

  “Before I could reply to this, the grisly cries sounded again from left, right, and rear of us.

  “It is him and all his dead mates,” Ivar groaned. “Here! Have it back.” He flung down the few pieces of treasure he had bundled in his cloak and shoved past the men around him.

  I gripped my portion all the tighter and struck off through the trees, Einar swinging on his crutch beside me, and the others pressing on our heels—and none of us knowing where we went, only that we couldn’t stay.

  Still, the ghost voices pursued us, gained on us, drove us faster until we were trotting, running, losing each other in the dark, while a wind swept through the trees, hurling the rain at our backs and making the forest tremble.

  Then Kammo’s cold fingers squeezed our hearts. Flinging down our treasure and our shields, we crashed through the branches, slipping on moss-slick rocks and gray, rotted wood, careening against black tree trunks—fleeing in mortal terror while the ghost voices howled all around.

  Scratched and battered and sobbing for breath, I tripped and pitched forward into a black ooze that sucked at my hands and feet. Around me others splashed and struggled in the muck. I heard their voices crying to Odin and Jesus.

  “Back! Turn back!” I screamed, twisting around and heaving myself at a tussock of marsh grass. The ghost voices shrieked on every side of us now, unbearably loud, but mingled with them were other sounds as well—barking dogs and humming arrows.

  Shadows darted among the trees by the margin of the swamp. I drew Wound-Snake from its scabbard and slashed about me wildly, striking only empty air—until a snarling form hurtled out of the dark and bore me down. Instantly, hands held me, wrenching my arms behind my back and binding them with a bowstring.

  They were hunting us down and herding us together at the edge of the bog. There they pushed us to our knees and strung us together on a rope, like fish on a line.

  Meantime the howling kept up in distant parts of the forest, until one of our captors lifted a long funnel of birch bark to his lips and gave an answering blast.

  This was the ghost voice—a birch bark horn! I groaned aloud for shame. If I had only kept us in a circle with our shields locked together, we could have withstood these men, whoever they were, all night long. Instead, I had run with the fleetest. For, as I have said, Kammo lurked in the trees that night: that is the name the Finns give to the sudden terror that falls on men and beasts in the wildwood, sending them flying in mindless panic until they drop.

  It was he who had beaten us, and I would feel his cold finger on my heart again before I ever left this land.

  Their leader came to inspect us where we huddled in the wet grass, taking each of us in turn by the hair and forcing back our heads to peer at us by the light of a torch.

  His own face was long and narrow, the lips thin, and the eyes sunk in deep shadow as though they looked out from caves. He moved amongst us with the silent step of a cat. In the days to come we would know him well. His name was Joukahainen. And he was cruel as only cats are.

  “Viikingit,” I heard him say in a low voice to one of his men.

  Hauling us to our feet, they began to drive us at sword’s point through the black and dripping woods, setting their dogs to bite our heels when we stumbled. How long we walked I have no notion. The smell of pine alternated with the stench of the fens until, at last, we emerged into a wide stretch of meadow and I smelled all at once the fragrance of hay and a faint whiff of the sea.

  All the while my brain seethed with half-formed schemes of escape. Thank the gods I had left Stig in charge of the Viper. Some way or another his cool head would find us.

  Beyond the meadow an earthen rampart rose out of the black, and at the sound of a low whistle, a massive timber gate swung out on creaking hinges. Through it we were driven into a shadowy yard.

  In the center of this yard the shape of a hall could just be made out, timber-sided and thatch-roofed, of such a size that a hundred men might sleep in it without touching elbows. Not far from this stood a little square building made of tightly fitted logs, a shed or a storeroom of some sort, as it seemed. It was here they halted us while a door was slid noisily to the side, and then drove us, still strung together, into the black and airless room.

  At once we stumbled over bodies trussed up in the same way as ourselves and, as the door slid shut again, the muffled voice of Stig, from somewhere beneath my rump, bade me a good evening.

  “Ambushed us ashore whilst we were cooking our dinner,” he said bitterly when we had sorted ourselves out a little. “Shot us down with arrows before ever we saw them. Some of us are hurt, three they left for dead.”

  The Viper, as far as he knew, was still moored in the creek, and they had done her no harm. What direction that creek lay from the stinking hole in which we presently found ourselves, he had no more idea than the rest of us.

  By counting off, I numbered us nineteen; six in a bad way from wounds. Sixteen were missing. One of those was Einar Tree-Foot. Still, we told each other, we would take the measure of this place come morning and show these Finns what sort of men they had to deal with.

  Glum put an end to that brave talk. “Mates, I—I have never before tonight felt fear,” he began in a voice so small we barely heard him. “Never felt Odin—gone. Friend Odd—” his voice trembled and broke, “friend Odd—I have lost the rage!”

  We did our best to reassure him: “Glum, don’t think about it,” I said earnestly. “Anyone’s nature can fail him now and then, you’ll soon be your wolfish self again.”

  “Why, even Odin,” urged Stig, “must sleep sometimes.”

  “And besides,” added Starkad, “who could be at his best waist-deep in muck with a dog hanging on each arm and the wailing of god-knows-what in his ears?”

  But Glum only moaned.

  He could sense things in his animal soul—presences, powers, dangers—where we saw nothing. What did he sense now? We lapsed into silence. Wedged side by side with our knees under our chins, our backs sore, and our hands numb from the cutting bowstrings that bound us, we whiled away the long hours in gloomy thought, with nothing to do but wait for what the morning might bring.

  †

  It came soon enough.

  Slivers of gray seeped through chinks in the wall, and we caught the familiar sounds of a farm waking up. Still, no one came near us, and we began to wonder if we were forgotten, so we pounded the walls with our feet and shouted to be let out.

  Footsteps came our way. The door slid open on its track with a screech, letting in the gray day, and I saw with a shock what a wretched-looking bunch we were—dirty, bloody, haggard, and tangled like crabs in a sack.

  Blond, bearded men—they could have been our countrymen but for their outlandish speech—dragged us out and stood us on our feet by the shed. Outside, the sky was the color of iron and a cold drizzle was falling. I saw that most of our captors were armed with crossbows. These deadly devices were their favorite weapons and they coated the tips of the darts with poison.

  With shouts and blows they marched us from the shed around the corner of the great hall into the yard that lay before it. My heart sank as I took in the size of the place: it was both farm and fortress. Its tall rampart of earth and sharpened logs enclosed easily a dozen acres, with stables and granaries and all the usual outbuildings, and living quarters for several hundred.

  My guess about the sea had been right. It seemed we were at the head of a narrow bay or inlet, for the tops of some wooded hills showed beyond the rampart on all sides but one. Set in the wall on that side was a wide gate of rough-hewn planks, bolted with a heavy crossbeam. On a parapet above it, sentries stood watch. Surely, I thought, there must be boats of some kind beached on the other side, if only we can get to them.

  To my left, southwards more or less, another sturdy gate opened towards the fie
lds. It was through this that we had passed the night before. It was the only gate they would ever open for us.

  In the opposite direction, some few hundred paces away, the ground rose sharply and the rampart was extended outward and upward to enclose the foot of a peculiar cone-shaped hill of bare, dun-colored earth, which dominated the whole settlement. No feature of the place was of greater importance to us than this hill, but I was not to understand that for some time to come—if I can truly claim to understand it even now.

  I had no more time for gazing, for a more worrisome sight forced itself upon me. I now saw the source of a smell that had assailed my nostrils the night before as they marched us along in the dark. I thought perhaps a dog had died and no one had taken it away. The yard in which we stood was sown with sharpened stakes of about the height of a man, and on most of them, in every stage of decomposition, were human heads.

  Odin All-Father, I prayed, let me not show fear. Aloud, I said with a smile, that I didn’t much care for the flowers they grew in this garden, and my men laughed loudly. Let no one say we weren’t true vikings now!

  Then, coming toward us through the gruesome thicket, I recognized that man with the silent cat’s step. My impression of his features, I saw now, had been no trick of the firelight. His age was about five and twenty, his build extraordinarily thin. He was smooth-shaven, and his face, framed by straight blond hair, was nearly as fleshless as the whitened skulls atop their stakes.

  Joukahainen. I felt the hairs stir on the back of my neck.

  At a word from him, his men began to cut us loose from the ropes that passed under our arms. Four of the lads, unsupported, sank to the ground. In a swift instant his sword was out, and one, two, three, four, he struck off their heads—like turnips off a stalk. We hardly knew what we were watching before it was over.

  I thought he would kill us all, but it was only the wounded, the useless ones. Two more poor lads were pulled out of line, forced to their knees, and slaughtered in the same way. One was Otkel.

  When he stopped in front of Stig, whose hair on one side of his face was caked with blood, my heart froze. But Stig roared an oath and aimed a kick at him. Joukahainen smiled coolly and passed on. Clever Stig. Strong enough to fight, strong enough to work.

  We watched the butchery of our mates with a careless air, as brave men should. And the lads died well—Einar the Jomsviking would have approved. Then, crowing like a cock, the Headsman, as we came to call him, did a little dance around his new trophies while whirling his sword around his head.

  This weird performance might have gone on longer, but he stopped in mid-step at the sound of a voice that issued from the hall behind our backs. I turned to see who was there, but the only impression I got was of an untidy bundle of old clothes and wisps of white hair, half-hidden in the shadows well back of the open door. This puzzled me because I was sure I had heard the simpering voice of a little girl.

  The Headsman, his thin lips curved into a smile, sauntered to the door, speaking some gibberish to his men with a final glance at us as he went by. I caught ‘Viikingit’ again, and another word that we would learn well in the days ahead—’orjat’. Slaves.

  †

  We were slaves plain and simple. Like the thralls on my father’s farm; only we were not treated like animals, for farmers treat their animals well enough. These men took pleasure in abusing us.

  We all came in for our share, but Joukahainen made it his special business to torment Glum as soon as he discovered that the giant would not defend himself. A dozen times a day he would cut him with a sleigh whip until the blood ran, and jeer when Glum cringed and threw up his scarred arms in front of his face. The pain and confusion in the berserker’s eyes then was almost more than I could bear to see.

  The work they set us to, I need hardly describe: forking hay, mucking out the stables, tending the stock—things I had done all my life without minding much. What was hard were the constant threats and beatings; the confinement at night in our airless wooden box, not ten paces square, that stank of urine-soaked straw and unwashed bodies; the vile grub of spoiled greens and gristle; and always the pall of dismal weather and the stench of decay that overhung this place.

  The one spot of brightness was that Einar Tree-Foot was not lost to us after all. Late in the afternoon on the third day after our capture, a hunting party brought him in, crutch and all, caked with mud and reeking to the sky. He’d been hiding all the while in the swamp where we were captured.

  “Gave m’self up—for Einar Tree-Foot doesn’t desert his mates,” he said scowling when we were alone with him. “Young vikings want looking after.”

  Well, that was his story, and I won’t dispute it. Certainly, those few days saved his life. Maimed as he was, he surely would have lost his head with the others that first morning. But when they brought him in Joukahainen was enjoying his daily sauna, and no one dared disturb him. The next day, the Headsman spent hunting, and by the time he finally noticed Einar, the old man had assigned himself the care of the chicken coop and appeared to be useful enough to let live.

  In fact, with those nimble fingers of his, he pilfered eggs for us, which was all that saved us from starving utterly.

  †

  After each weary day, we lay, huddled body against body on the cold earthen floor of our prison and dreamed of escape.

  “Trolls take the place!” Kraki swore one night early in our captivity, down on his hands and knees, scratching in the dirt with his fingernails.

  “Give it up,” sighed Starkad wearily. “Haven’t we tried? Without some sort of tool…”

  Kraki turned on him savagely, “We’ll steal a tool—a hatchet, a knife. Thor’s Billy goat, we could steal a knife, couldn’t we?”

  “Not until our jailers grow more careless than they have been.”

  “Too late for me, I can’t stick it. Captain,” he turned his anger on me, “I’m not made like you and these others. I won’t be a dog in chains! I mean to run away tomorrow when we’re in the fields, and if there’s a brave man here, let him come with me!”

  “Run where?” Ivar laughed bitterly. We might as well be on an island in the ocean, except that it’s an ocean of trees. The Finns know their way in it, and we don’t. They’d catch us before we went half a mile. And if we did reach another settlement, who’s to say they would treat us any better? It isn’t this shed that’s our prison—it’s the whole damned country!”

  “But the sea,” cried Kraki, “that’s our ocean. We’ve only to steal a boat…”

  “Only that?” said Stig wearily. “Have you noticed, friend Kraki, how they guard the sea-gate day and night? And as for wriggling through the marsh that lies between the meadow and the shore, why, the sedge grows so thick you couldn’t part it with a sword, and you’ll meet some pretty snakes there, too.”

  “Heh?” struck in Eystein Crickneck. He was an addle-brained youth whose head lolled permanently to one side as the result of his having fallen out of a tree as a baby. I had taken him on in Jumne for the sake of his uncle, who was an experienced hand.

  “Heh? Snakes is it? A snake won’t bite you, friend Stig, if you rub up your toes with butter and ashes, you know. Bless me, I never go a-walking but that I rub up my toes—and I’ve not been bitten yet.”

  “Eystein Crickneck,” Stig answered dryly, “a man may be thought wise if he never speaks and comes inside when it rains. Take it to heart.”

  There was a little laughter—most of it Eystein’s, who always laughed the loudest at his own foolishness. And after that, silence.

  At last young Bengt said, “Well, then, my God, what are we going to do?”

  “You’ll do what your captain tells you!” Einar snapped at him. “You and Kraki and all. You’ll bide your time and save your lives for a better day.”

  I was glad to see that the Jomsviking, for all his talk of brave viking deaths, had a cannier side to his nature. Men who are determined to die like vikings usually succeed before they reach his ripe age.
Einar Tree-Foot was a survivor. I liked him the better for it.

  But Kraki answered him in a surly tone. “I want no wise words from the old fool who brought us to this.” He flung himself past Eystein and his fingers reached for Einar’s throat.

  “Enough of that!” I ordered, putting myself between them. “Kraki sit down and listen to me. We are a crew. What one does, all must do. Sooner or later they will make a slip, and we will strike. Until then watch and wait.”

  I put as much conviction into this speech as I could manage, but truly, I hardly believed it myself. I could see despair growing in us, a little more every day. Soon it would turn to melancholy, in time to madness. More than a year had passed since my escape from Iceland. If this was to be the end of my adventure, I would have been better off to burn at home. “Wake up, Father Odin,” I spoke to the dark, “please, wake up and see us.”

  Next morning, while we were working in the hay, Kraki made a dash for the trees. The guard who had been set to watch us saw him go, but made no hurry about sounding the alarm.

  That evening they carried Kraki back. His head went up on a stake. His body they threw into the shed with us. From the looks of it a bear had gotten to him first.

  To a man, we were frightened.

  †

  Then one day, when we had been prisoners for two weeks or three, we made a discovery: we were not alone in our captivity.

  It was evening, and we were being fed our slops and sour beer, as usual, on the ground in front of our cell, before being shut up for the night. Even in the rain—it had been raining all day—we would not willingly go inside that stifling box. As we squatted there, picking the stuff over, a figure came squelching through the mud in our direction—not on a straight course but in a series of looping tangents, like a boat tacking against the breeze. He came to rest, at last, in front of us, with a look of vague surprise on his face as though this were not at all the destination he had planned. Then, with a sudden twitch of his shoulders, he dropped down beside us.

  “Turnips,” he said. “Not so rotted as they might be.”