Odin’s Child

by Bruce Macbain

  It was a fine feast. Women and children from the nearer farms had come along with their men, and because the air was warm, we sat outdoors and dined on gobbets of bear meat with salmon and bread and plenty of ale to wash it down.

  When we had eaten and drunk, Vainamoinen placed on his head a tall peaked cap, and sat down on a low stone in the midst of us. The last slanting rays of the autumn sun streamed through the branches of an ancient rowan that arched above him. Mothers hushed their children while he tucked his flowing beard in his belt and took up his kantele—so fragile a thing that he could have crushed it in his hands.

  He brushed the horse-hair strings with his fingers and it sounded like birds and little bells. I had never imagined music so beautiful.

  After a time, he handed over the instrument to another man and turned towards the slim youth sitting beside him, who was his apprentice in the art of yoiking. For this is their custom that, while one man plays, two men will sing together, sitting face to face, with knee pressed against knee and right hand holding right hand.

  They sang for an hour or more—singing the seas to honey, as the Finn folk say, the hills to sweet cakes, and the rocks to hens’ eggs. I wished it had been me sitting there. Could my father, I found myself wondering, could Black Thorvald have been to me as Old Vainamoinen was to that youth, if only the Christmen had not driven him mad? I found my eyes suddenly filled with tears.

  A little girl crawled into my lap and fell asleep with her head against my chest. In the grass, crickets creaked. The sun went down.

  Here in Ainikki’s world, among the people she loved, watched over by her kindly gods, I felt myself, for the first time that I could remember, deeply at peace. What a spell the old magician cast.

  Lemminkainen came and squatted beside me, looking gentler than before, for the music had that power even over him.

  “How old is he?” I whispered.

  He shook his head, “No one remembers when Old Vainamoinen wasn’t old.”

  “He must have a fine brood of grandsons.”

  “It’s strange, that. He’s never had a child of his loins, though he’s lusty enough. In a way, I suppose, we are all his children.”

  “And I’m puzzled, Lemminkainen.”

  “How is that?”

  “The sampo. Why do they want it back so badly? For its magic is filth and dust compared to the magic in Vainamoinen’s song. And what if they learn too late that its only power is the power to turn Kalevala into Pohjola?”

  He looked up sideways and searched my face for a long moment, “What a peculiar sort of viikinki you are.” Then sighed and shook his head, “The wise are never quite wise enough, are they?”

  It was nearly dark when the singing ended. Men and women moved away, to bed down where they could, and I returned the sleeping child to its mother. Vainamoinen stood and stretched himself and straightway grabbed at a lassie who flitted by—she could have been Ainikki’s twin. He gave her a woolly kiss, but she escaped from his arms and ran away laughing, “You’re too old, Vainamoinen!”

  “Too old,” he sighed after her, “too old.” He turned and shambled to the house.

  The thought stirred in me that if I were not ‘the viikinki’—or maybe even if I were—here, with a sweet little wife to warm me and this wizard to teach me all his wit, here might be a place to rest a while from wandering.

  Inside, while the lamps still burned, I stayed up with the young men, sharpening weapons and boasting how many of Pohjola’s folk we would send down the Dark River.

  “But their magicians are fearsome,” said one.

  “Bah!” said another. “We’ll leave them with grass growing through their heads.”

  By the All-Father, I hoped so.

  30

  The Beer of War

  The sun was over the treetops when I awoke. A young Kalevalan, armed with crossbow and sword, was prodding me with his toe.

  I tried to get up but sank back with a groan, knowing I was going to be sick again. It was all that lovely fat bear meat I had loaded my shrunken stomach with. I’d spent most of the night clutching my belly and shitting, and only near daybreak had gotten to sleep at last; a sleep filled with rushing, crashing dreams.

  Making my way shakily to the water bucket, which stood in a corner of the big empty room, I plunged my whole head in, which made me feel a little better. I dressed myself in Finnish clothes lent me by the farmer’s oldest son and buckled on a borrowed sword and dagger.

  Weak-kneed and hollow-bellied, I emerged into the glare of a bright fall morning just as Vainamoinen’s rumbling voice rang out across the yard. He was marshaling his troops and calling each man up by name to present his weapons for inspection. The singer was in fine feather, with his tall cap on his head and a leather jerkin studded with brass nails over his leaf green tunic. His snowy beard rippled down his chest to the buckle of his sword belt. Waving his sword to one side and the other, he sorted the men into batches of a dozen, the complement for each war-sloop.

  It came as a surprise to me, seeing him now, to observe that he wasn’t actually a very big man. But he had a way of filling all the space around him with his presence, so that you remembered him bigger than he was. Even that may not be the whole truth of it. Against all sense and reason, it seemed to me that at a certain moment of high feeling—as I will tell below—he actually got bigger. Absurd, of course.

  “Hai, Lemminkainen,” I heard him call to the Rover, “you grim fellow! Shouldn’t a man laugh when he drinks the beer of war?”

  But Lemminkainen was not to be cheered. He stood with his men, apart, looking morose. I, too, hailed the brother of the girl I loved—and got only a curt nod in reply.

  All the smoldering anger that he harbored against the viikingit had returned with double force, it seemed, as soon as the gentling effects of Vainamoinen’s music had worn off.

  Not a good beginning.

  I had worked it all out in my mind during the night, in between bouts of nausea. With their father dead, I figured it was Lemminkainen’s right to give his sister in marriage. Of course, it was too soon to speak of that—I feared to anger him when Ainikki’s life depended on our working together. First I must make him my friend. I didn’t expect it to be easy.

  With a smile on my lips, I strolled over to where he stood.

  “Here, Viikinki.” Frowning, he thrust a crossbow into my hands like the one he himself carried. “Don’t play with the darts, they’re dipped in adder’s venom.”

  Like your tongue, I nearly said, but muttered thanks instead.

  These pleasantries were interrupted by the women of the farm, who brought out bowls of curds for our breakfast. We ate in haste, sitting all together on the ground. As soon as we finished, we started down the path to the beach. There the singer sang over us a charm to make us proof against the iron of our enemies and then, with wild war cries, we ran to launch the boats.

  The Finns have no long-ships such as we have. Their largest craft is a sloop, not much bigger than a large rowboat and holding a dozen men if they hug their knees and hang half over the side. In five of these, with Vainamoinen’s own red-painted one in the lead, we set sail for Pohjola.

  Out of our whole force only Lemminkainen’s twenty crossbowmen looked like tested fighters, and even they didn’t possess one helmet or ring-shirt between them. The remaining forty or so were indifferently armed, some only with cudgels and scythes. To fill out our strength, we counted on my twelve half-starved men and on an unknown number of Kalevalans who were said to be gathering in their own boats to join us farther up the coast. Unless these amounted to half a hundred at least I didn’t give much for our chances.

  The weather was fine our first day out, and Vainamoinen steered a brisk course in amongst the tiny skerries that fringe the shore. But in the afternoon of the second day, the sky turned black and sheets of rain swept the gray water.

  We bailed for our lives. Lemminkainen, in whose sloop I sat, made us take the sinew bowstrings off of our cros
sbows, roll them up in our caps and stuff them in our shirts to keep them dry. But it hardly helped.

  And with the rain beating against our faces, we never saw the boats that had been supposed to meet us. Perhaps they were never there.

  Late that night, hours later than we had planned, we dropped our sails and rowed silently to the far side of a little wooded isle that lay in the bay of Pohjola.

  I counted it the eleventh night since my escape.

  The rain had passed on by then, leaving behind a cold drizzle that hung in the air and penetrated our bones. Despite the damp, we got a few wet twigs to burn and soon had a smoky fire going, down behind a hummock where it could not be seen from the shore. There we dried our bowstrings and crowded round to warm ourselves, as many as could. Still, our teeth chattered and our spirits were low.

  Since that first evening when his singing had charmed me, I had wanted a chance to know Vainamoinen better, but there was never the opportunity. And now, again, he was in ceaseless motion, everywhere at once among the grumbling men. He trotted from group to group where they sat hunched on the cold stones, praising, encouraging, joking. In truth, this man was everything to them.

  And so I decided to pass the time with Ilmarinen the Smith, for I thought that he, too, must know many interesting things. I found him sitting some distance from the others, on the trunk of a fallen tree, with his chin on his fist, and seeming deep in thought.

  I sat down beside him.

  “My father was proud of his blacksmith’s skill,” I began. “He was a sorcerer, too. He’s dead now, though he visits me sometimes in dreams … He was a gloomy man.”

  The smith grunted.

  “This sampo of yours,” I began again, “it wants a lot of blood, doesn’t it, and fattens on men’s pricks. I suppose there was no other way?”

  “It eats what it wants and wants what it’s been taught,” he said angrily. “Do a man’s children always turn out as he would like?”

  “Ah … well, I hadn’t thought of it just that way. So, when you bring it back, you’ll train it to other food?”

  He lifted his head from his hand and looked curiously at me. “How should that possibly concern you?”

  I didn’t intend to answer that question just yet, and so I shrugged it off and we sat for a time in silence.

  “Your father,” he said after a while, “he … ah … taught you things?”

  “What—magic? No, not much. It’s against the law, actually, in my country. They’re liable to put you to death for it.”

  “You don’t say so.”

  “And what he did teach me—rune-spells and such—well, I hardly know what to think of it. It did him little good.”

  “Oh,” he said gravely, “it never does the sorcerer, you know. That’s the price we pay.”

  I thought he sounded very sad.

  Lemminkainen called to me just then. Leaving Ilmarinen on his log, I went to where the foresters were gathering round their chief. We readied our gear and one more time rehearsed our plan.

  The drizzle had thinned now to let a few pale stars shine through between the scudding clouds. The moon had already set. Time to start.

  Into the bottom of his sloop we threw our lassos, crossbows, a sack containing tinderboxes, candle stubs, a pot of bear grease, and four extra swords. Then, with whispered farewells all around, two of the Rover’s men rowed us to the far side of the inlet where the trees grew down to the water’s edge.

  These two complained of leaving their chief and asked to be allowed to face death at his side. But he refused them. This was a mission for the two of us alone. We watched the black night swallow them up and waited till the creak of their oars had faded.

  “Now, Viikinki,” he said in his biting tone, “let’s find some plunder for you.”

  Keeping just out of sight of the rampart, we crept through the dripping trees around the curve of the inlet to the spot where I had made my escape, and, catching the tops of the palings with our lassos, pulled ourselves up and over. Together we huddled at the foot of the wall.

  “You hear?” he whispered. “Where’s it coming from?”

  Distant voices drifted to us.

  “Louhi’s hall, I think. But it’s seldom they carouse so late.”

  “Celebrating maybe?”

  Celebrating what? I wondered. The end of harvest and the slaughter of my men? He must have been asking himself the same thing. Neither of us dared say it aloud.

  Then a dog barked, loud as thunder in the still night, and out of the dark a snarling black form shot at us. Before I could react, Lemminkainen swung his bow around and fired at the glowing eyes, which was all of the beast we could see. The poison worked swiftly.

  “Night patrols?” he hissed. “Curse you, Viikinki, why didn’t you say so?”

  “I didn’t know!”

  We crouched against the wall, listening with all our ears. Far away, a second dog barked in answer to the first. After that, nothing.

  “All right, we go on,” he said at last. “Stick close.”

  But first we needed to get our bearings.

  “Remember the model I made, Lemminkainen. The hill is ahead of us to the left, a good bowshot away. The sea-gate is off to the right about the same distance. Between them is Louhi’s hall. Beyond that you come to the brew-house, the sauna, some other buildings. Then up by the meadow-gate on the far side are the peasants’ cottages, barns and stables.”

  “And the prison of your men?”

  “About fifteen paces this side of Louhi’s hall. From its door you can see their door—and, if they look, they can see us.”

  “So. The sea-gate first.”

  Over the gate a short parapet projected from the inside of the rampart, supported on posts and reached by two ladders, one at either end. Day and night, a pair of sentries stood here looking out to sea. Hrapp had said that Joukahainen was fanatical about this precaution.

  Pressing close to the wall and moving by inches, we crept to the foot of the nearer ladder. Lemminkainen tiptoed beneath the parapet and crouched at the other end.

  “Now!”

  We took the rungs two at a time, leaping onto the parapet with our bows leveled—and nearly shot each other. There were no guards.

  The drawbridge, which should have been hauled up at sunset, still lay in place across the ditch below.

  We exchanged worried looks. Could it be only carelessness? Or were we being drawn into a trap?

  “Load the fire dart, Lemminkainen.”

  I bent over the tinderbox and struck a spark to light the oiled rag that he had tied around one of his arrows. With a snap of the string, it streaked low over the black water, toward the island where Vainamoinen had a man watching in a tree-top.

  Back on the ground again, we lifted the great oaken cross-beam out of its iron brackets and set it down softly by the wall.

  Half our mission was done. Soon the Kalevalan war-sloops would be rounding the island, rowing with muffled oars up the inlet. They would cluster silently, poised to burst through the gate. We had Vainamoinen’s promise to wait for the last possible moment before dawn—until, with my arm stretched out before me, I could count my fingers, he had said—to give us time to find Ainikki and get her safely away.

  My plan was simply to fire the out-buildings by the meadow-gate—that being the farthest point to which we could lure them—and wait for Joukahainen and his ninety warriors to run in that direction. Then, I with Lemminkainen and my vikings, would rush into the hall, gather up Ainikki and run with her to the sea-gate. There I would have men posted, to hold it open until the Kalevalans landed on the beach. They would attack when they saw the glow of fire from the burning out-buildings.

  How simple it had sounded two days ago in the war-council at Kalevala. But now, how foolhardy and desperate! Were my men even alive? Back we slipped along the rampart to where the little prison house screened us from the view from Louhi’s door, then, bending low, dashed to its side.

  I pressed my ear t
o the planks. No sound. There was ice in the pit of my stomach.

  “Hand me the bear grease,” I whispered.

  Holding my breath, I stepped round the corner. If anyone should walk out of Louhi’s hall now he would see me. Lemminkainen, with the lassos and crossbows, pressed close behind.

  I dipped two fingers in the grease and worked it into the tracks, top and bottom, over which the door screeched when it was slid open. Then I groped for the lock—a contraption of leather loops with a pin that went through them—and fumbled with it.

  “Can’t you hurry?

  “I’ve never worked the thing before—I can’t see to do it.”

  “Let me.”

  “Get away!”

  Throwing down all our gear, he thrust his hands in among mine and we struggled with the lock and each other. From the hall came a snatch of song and the sound of a bench scraping. Every nerve in my body screamed, “Run!”

  At last the pin came away in my hand.

  “Now, pull, Lemminkainen, while I push … gently….”

  “It doesn’t move.

  “A little harder….”

  There came a screech like the yowl of a scalded cat. My heart somersaulted into my mouth.

  “Wide enough … get in.” He shoved at my back.

  We stepped into complete and total blackness.

  They’re dead!

  Next moment, a fist crashed into the side of my head and another into my stomach. Hands gripped my arms and legs and flung me on my back. Stinking, naked bodies held me down and a foul breath blew in my face. Nearby, the Rover also thrashed in the straw, cursing.

  A hard hand covered my mouth and the sharpened end of a broken stick pressed against my throat.

  “This for you, whoreson!”

  “Ahh—ahh! Stig, it’s me!”

  In the glow of our candles their faces hovered like phantoms, dark-circled eyes screwed up against the light. Skeletal ribs and breastbones showed through the holes in their rags. Their skins were black with grime, and coils of matted hair and beard hung from their heads like hunks of rope. Were we this bad? I had to leave and come back to see us as we really looked.