Odin’s Child

by Bruce Macbain

  Along one side of the chamber stood five or six rough posts about the height of my waist, their tops carved into flat, round-eyed faces: Pohjola’s gods. On the clay floor at their feet a body lay, stretched on its back and covered with a linen shroud, all but the face. The bone-white skin of that face was even whiter and the sunken eyes even deeper than they had been when Joukahainen lived.

  I looked into the yellow haze, standing on tiptoe to see over the heads of the two Kalevalans who stood just inside the entrance. With a sinking heart, I saw that besides ourselves and the Headsman’s corpse, there was only Louhi in the room.

  Stark naked. The withered flaps of her breasts, the purplish skin, the sagging belly—revolting enough. But what she was doing was still more so.

  I had imagined the sampo to be a grindstone of some sort, for Ainikki had compared it to a mill that endlessly ground out barley, salt, and silver.

  But those were only poets’ words. Around the base of it, indeed, three open casks were placed, each one overflowing with one of those treasures—whether put there by the Pohjolans themselves or magically produced by the sampo, I cannot say.

  But the sampo was no mill.

  It was a pillar of black iron, from base to tip about three feet and a half high, and the thickness of a man’s thigh. The tip was plastered with strips of gold foil, bits of colored cloth, and ribbons, and over all was looped a cord to which were tied little shreds of parchment—or so I thought at first—all shriveled up and hard. But I looked again and my skin went cold. Poor Eystein Crickneck. One of those shriveled remnants was surely his, squeezed of its juice to feed the iron prick.

  What is it about gods, I thought with sudden revulsion, that brings out the worst in us all—not only the Christmen, as I once believed, but all? What crimes we commit for their sakes!

  Louhi crouched with her arms wrapped around the thing, running her hands up and down the cold metal, while she threw back her head and wailed her shrill song.

  Just as I came up behind the Kalevalans, she must have sensed that she was not alone. Her cry died in her throat. She turned and peered at us through the tangle of greasy hair that had fallen half over her face.

  One look at those eyes told me she was quite mad.

  “Ilmarinen? Is it you? Ah, I knew you would come. I cast rowan twigs in the fire and saw you in the smoke.” The voice was small, the words trailing off into sighs.

  “You love me still, don’t you, my strong-armed blacksmith? Oh, I know you do. Help me, then. Help your poor Louhi.”

  She formed her lips into a simpering smile such as a little girl might put on to entice some favor from a gruff father. On her face the effect was ghastly.

  “I have been here so long. I have sung to it, pleasured it, only to make it bring back his life. But it won’t. Ilmarinen, you command it, make it give Skinny Man back to me.” Her body shook with sobs.

  The Smith put his hands to his face and sagged against the wall.

  “Mistress.” Vainamoinen addressed her in a hard voice. “We’ve come for the sampo—and for the girl. What have you done with her?”

  “Eh? Done with her? But you’ve seen her, Vainamoinen, unless old age has blinded you at last! Or is it night outside? Yes, of course, and you passed her in the dark. Little Ainikki, that sweet child—the prettiest flower in my garden!”

  “No,” I breathed.”

  “She murdered him,” Louhi screamed. “Murdered my Skinny Man. In the sauna—with a knife hidden inside her bunch of twigs, inside the whisk of passion. She stabbed him—let out his blood through his lovely white skin. Then she locked the door and piled more and more wood on the fire, kept pouring water on the glowing stones until the steam took her breath away. The cunning bitch! She knew what I would do to her. Oh, she knew. But I have had my revenge all the same. For three days and nights, while we sang the death song over Joukahainen, I cut and I carved. She isn’t pretty Ainikki anymore. Can a girl be called pretty without eyes—heh? Without a nose? Without lips?”

  “I’ll have your life!” Not knowing how I got there, I stood in the middle of the chamber with my sword in my fist and black hate in my heart.

  But Louhi was too far-gone in madness to be frightened.

  “Viikinki? You? Have even my slaves come to mock me?”

  A spasm seized her, and she let out an animal scream, shaking her head back and forth in a frenzy, flinging foam from her lips.

  The scream ended as I struck her in the face with all my strength. Her head snapped back and she slumped against the sampo. I aimed my sword at her heart and drew back my arm.

  “I forbid it!” Vainamoinen’s voice exploded in the tiny chamber. He took my wrist in a crushing grip and held it until my fingers opened and my sword clattered to the floor.

  His face was terrible—red, round-eyed, as different from his accustomed one as mud from milk. But his size terrified me the most. It seemed to me that he towered above me, filling the chamber, that his voice was a thundering waterfall, that he held over my head a fist as big as a barrel.

  I waited for the blow that would kill me—my eyes shut like a frightened child. When it didn’t come, I dared look again. There was only Vainamoinen the man.

  “Why did you disobey me?”

  I couldn’t find my voice, but the Singer seemed to read my face, my mind.

  “The girl? It’s to do with her? So.”

  His fingers relaxed a little on my wrist. “Listen to me, Viikinki. It’s not for any plain man like you to kill the Mistress of Pohjola. Leave that to Ilmarinen and me. But let this thought console you. You cried out for Louhi’s life? We have it. Ainikki has taken the lover, and we will take the sampo—these are her life. If you hate her, Viikinki, wish her many long years of life to come.”

  “But Ainikki—”

  “Died in her anger with her enemy at her feet, as it’s good to die. She needs no pity from us. Now, seeing that you’re here, you may stay. Ilmarinen tells me that you know a little of magic. Stand in the corner and be quiet. You may learn more.”

  He turned back to Louhi, who crouched by the sampo, her shoulders working up and down, and strings of blood and spittle hanging from her mouth.

  “Now Mistress,” he said, “Let it go. We want it.”

  “Heh? What do you say? Want what?”

  “You understand me. Undo the binding spells or Ilmarinen will break them—and break you.”

  “The sampo? You’ve come for the sampo? Fools!”

  “Come, come, Louhi,” Vainamoinen’s voice was soothing. “Are we not old friends? For friendship’s sake….”

  With a sob she wrapped her arms around the thing, clamped her knees to it, hugged it to her withered breasts.

  “Feel the hot blood beating in it,” she moaned. “How it throbs and burns my cheek! Give up this? The power that quickens the seed in my fields, that makes my rams and bulls and warriors lusty, that makes me rich!”

  The Singer looked hard at his friend. Ilmarinen’s rough face was pale and pinched, but he drew a long breath and began his chant—bass notes that echoed in the little chamber like the rumble of boulders on a hillside.

  Louhi answered with her own weird birdsong. Beginning faintly while she still clung to the sampo, then gathering strength and tempo until she was on her feet, with her head back and her mouth wide open to show the flickering tip of her tongue between her teeth. And with their singing the air was so filled with taika, with magic, that I scarce dared breathe, and feared the crypt would burst with it like a putrid egg.

  Ilmarinen’s bass swelled and grew deeper, until he struck a note that I could feel through the soles of my shoes. The candle flames shuddered in their niches.

  But Louhi’s overtaxed voice was like a saw ripping wood, like a sled dragged over stones, then, finally, like nothing at all.

  She swayed and Vainamoinen caught her under the arms and pulled her away. Ilmarinen regarded her with liquid eyes full of pity and fondness. Then planting his stout legs wide apart, laid h
old of the sampo. His muscles cracked—he strained and grunted.

  “He fails,” she hissed. “His song was too weak.”

  But with a roar, he wrenched it up and swung it to his shoulder, nearly toppling backward under the weight of it. And at the same moment, Louhi uttered a sound like the sigh of a tired child and closed her eyes.

  In the shallow depression where the sampo had stood, a white grub, discovering itself in the light, made haste to escape.

  Louhi’s undershift and shawls were lying all about where she had thrown them. Vainamoinen gathered them up and hastily dressed her. Then tossing her over his shoulder as though she were a bundle of twigs, and grasping his torch with his free hand, he ducked through the low entrance way and started up the gallery. Behind him followed Ilmarinen, staggering under the weight of his burden.

  Which left me.

  Throwing my own burden onto my shoulder, I hastened to follow—my burden being one of the sampo’s three gifts—and not the barley or the salt. This much, by the Raven, was due me, and I meant to have it.

  Coming out into the air again, I was bathed in the red light of morning. From the top of the Copper Mountain I could see all of Pohjola beneath me now, and beyond it the endless forest on one hand and the endless sea on the other.

  Going down, the steps were even more slippery than before. With the heavy casket of silver clutched to my chest, I covered most of the distance on my backside.

  At the foot I found Bengt waiting for me with none other than Hrapp the Fool beside him.

  “Your mates said you’d come this way,” Hrapp said. “You went—inside there?” He lowered his voice and glanced up sidelong at the hill.

  I said I had and asked him where he’d been hiding all this time.

  “In the hay-barn that this rascal set on fire. I haven’t felt any too safe these last days and figured to lie low there. But I guessed what was afoot when I heard Bengt here hollering ‘Help, fire!’ The damned fool was shouting it in Norse!”

  Bengt sputtered and wanted to know what in God’s name he was supposed to shout it in, not having addled his wits with learning the filthy lingo of this place!

  I silenced him. “What’s been going on here?”

  Hrapp squeezed his forehead between the palms of his hands, as if trying to push his thoughts into some order.

  “Well, first they put off the harvest while they looked for you, even though the ears were ripe as could be.”

  “Captain knows that,” Bengt taunted.

  “And when they did finally put your boys to work again, and the crop was all in, the night before they was—was to have the sacrifice—well, that young’un—I mean to say—Ainikki, she—” he broke off and covered his eyes with his hand. “I mean to say, like someone in a poem—like a damned hero in a poem—and I never—wouldn’t have let her—” He stopped again, unable to speak.

  He loved her, too, I thought. Well, and why not?

  “I know what she did, friend. But why, when she’d held on for so long?”

  “She bought you time with her life!” Hrapp’s shoulders leaped out of control. “She never doubted you’d come. Oh no, her gods wouldn’t play her such a trick. But when she found out that they were getting ready to slaughter your men, she did the only thing she could think of that would bring all Pohjola to a standstill. And damn all, wasn’t she right! No sooner did they break down the door to the sauna and find Joukahainen’s body than the place went all to pieces. The warriors and the magicians fought over what to do with your crew—the warriors wanting to kill ’em at the Headsman’s funeral and the other bunch holding out for the sacrifice in the fields for the sake of the crops. And only Louhi could have decided between ’em, but she’d gone clean off her head, tearing her hair and raving to where no one was anxious to go near her. Finally she made ’em carry her Skinny Man’s stinking corpse up the hill where she’s kept it and herself ever since. Three days ago, that was. And all the while these proud Pohjolans, without their Mistress and their Headchopper to order ’em about, have been acting like the idle dogs they are.”

  Thirteen years of terror was finding its voice at last.

  With Hrapp and Bengt at my heels, I ran to catch up with Vainamoinen. He had rejoined his warriors in front of the hall. He had his sword at Louhi’s throat. She had revived a little by now and was weeping and shrieking by turns. He told the Pohjolans that he would let her go only when he and his men were safely away with the sampo.

  They heard him in silence, standing all in a bunch with Kalevalan crossbows trained on them from every side. In the dawn’s light you could see their faces, baffled and sullen, staring at their Mistress, but staring even harder at that locked door behind which their women and children were imprisoned.

  Catching sight of Glum, who had returned from the sea-gate, I gave him the treasure chest to hold and asked where Lemminkainen was. He pointed with his chin to the Garden.

  I suppose Vainamoinen had told him how she died and he was looking for her. I went and walked with him.

  We found her on the ground where a stake had been uprooted in the fighting. It was only by the hair that we knew her. Of her face there was not much left. What a bitter sight. We turned our eyes away.

  “She is a warrior and deserves a warrior’s honors,” I said between my teeth, “to pass through the fire to Valhalla. Instead of a blazing ship let’s give her Louhi’s hall!”

  Lemminkainen’s cold eyes flashed. “Hai, Viikinki, it’s a good thought. And the women of Pohjola will be her handmaids, their screams will be her dirge, when their skins burst in the twisting fire.”

  “Torches here!” I cried.

  We wrapped the savaged head in a cloak and, holding torches above our heads, ran to the hall. The Finns of both tribes followed us with wary looks. My men inside unbarred the door for us, then shut it again and held the women at bay while we prepared Ainikki’s pyre.

  We laid her head on Louhi’s bed and around it heaped necklaces, rings, and brooches ripped from the hostages. Then setting fire to the bedclothes, we ran around the hall torching everything—hangings, rushes, thatch, woodwork.

  When the Pohjolan women saw what we intended, their courage gave way and they commenced to wail, holding up their babies to us and pleading for their lives. We drove them back and slammed the door shut behind us, fastening it from the outside with a spear shaft passed through the wooden handle and wedged against the jamb.

  The Pohjolan warriors groaned and the Kalevalans, with their weapons at the ready, shifted their feet uneasily. In an instant flames licked up through the thatch and billows of black smoke poured into the sky. The women shrieked and pounded on the door.

  Hrapp appeared at my elbow, trembling in every muscle of his body. To see that hall burn, its savage guards helpless, its Mistress made pitiful! Not until this moment had he dared to think, to truly believe, that he was a free man.

  His features twisted in hate, he leapt up and began to prance around Louhi, waving his arms and crying, “What’ll you do for a house, old witch, old dog’s vomit, old dog shit! Heh? What’ll you do for a storyteller, old pig’s slop, old puke!”

  Disgust at this unseemly tantrum showed in Ilmarinen’s honest face. His blade flashed up and down. Hrapp’s shoulders gave one last, seismic shudder and delivered his head at Louhi’s feet.

  Meanwhile the women kept screaming and battering at the door. The roof was a mass of flame. The heat drove us back.

  One Pohjolan warrior, unable to bear it any longer, broke from the others and ran at the door. A couple of Kalevalan arrows flew wide of him but Lemminkainen slashed at his legs as he went by, cutting his hamstrings and felling him. The Rover dropped on him and had the man’s head off in an instant. Lemminkainen began a dance before the burning hall. In one hand holding up the Pohjolan’s head by its yellow hair, and whirling his sword in the other, he leapt and twisted, and shouted, “Hai! Hai!”

  Perhaps if he had not done that, I wouldn’t have done what I then did.
>
  In my mind’s eye I saw Joukahainen dancing that same dance on the first morning of our enslavement, when he had cut down my six friends. And I saw also other men, who leapt and howled around a burning farmhouse far away on Rangriver-under-Hekla. In my nostrils was the stink of things burning that ought never to burn.

  Glum stood nearby me with his broad-axe hooked over his shoulder. I snatched it from him and, leaning against the fierce heat, dashed in and swung at the spear shaft. The door burst open and bodies tumbled out in a cloud of smoke and cinders; choking, weeping, some crawling, some reeling and falling with their little ‘uns in their arms.

  “Traitor!” Lemminkainen howled, shrill as a woman, and rushed at me from the side with his sword upraised. I watched him come like a figure in a dream, and I, the dreamer who wants to run but can’t. I would not be alive now if Ilmarinen had not shot out an arm and caught him by the sleeve of his tunic, jerking him off his feet.

  “Oh, proud one,” snarled the Smith, pulling the Rover to him by a fistful of shirt. “Oh, clever one. The viikinki’s got more sense, by the gods, than you have. Burning the women! Not even for sweet Louhi’s sake would these Pohjolans have stood still another minute, and then we should have had to fight our way out and lost everything.”

  Lemminkainen was white with anger, but the Smith overmastered him as firmly as the Singer had done me.

  Meanwhile, Louhi’s fighters ran in to help their women get clear of the burning building.

  “Quick,” cried Vainamoinen, “away to the boats!”

  Ilmarinen hastened Lemminkainen in that direction with a firm hand between his shoulder blades, then again heaved the sampo to his shoulder and staggered toward the sea gate. Vainamoinen and Louhi followed. The Kalevalan warriors closed around them, keeping their crossbows cocked and watching their enemies over their shoulders.

  My lads started off, too, but halted and looked back at me puzzled. For I stood stock still, distracted by reproachful thoughts. Sense or soft heart, Odd Thorvaldsson? When will you ever put on the hardness of a man? ‘Kill and kill,’ Ainikki said—and meant it. And what have you done now but rob her poor ghost of the blood that was owed it?