Forged in Ice (Viking Odyssey)

by Ken Hagan

  ‘Patience is fair enough,’ returns Haldis, ‘but the girl doesn’t pull her weight, she idles and stares — not a word from her the day long. Maybe I will put her in the dairy. I won’t see her shirk there.’

  ‘No,’ says Bera with unaccustomed firmness. ‘It is better that she stays on wool with me — to help me catch up. What do you say, Da?’

  Father’s brow and eyes remain hidden in the shadows. We can’t read his face, but these days there is no request from Bera he is able to refuse. Before he can answer, Haldis storms out of the hall. We hear the sharp rap of her walking-cane against the gable door.

  *

  Haldis has brought a pot of buttermilk ale to the smithy-hole. She is too good-hearted to see old Snorri miss out. She fetches another pot — freshly ladled and over-brimming with froth — this time for Ulph in the sheepfold. Ulph is up to his eyes in blood and snot from a birthing ewe. He can’t take the pot till he is done. Haldis stands waiting, pot in hand, absentmindedly licking froth from the top of the ale.

  Sigi and I are helping Ulph with the mother-ewes that should have dropped their young weeks before. They are the last of the flock to come into labour, whether late-bred or anxious, whether lazy or stubborn, these are the ones in no hurry to lamb.

  The scrawny ewe between us on the ground is a struggler, fighting to give birth. She has nothing to show for it but clots of gripe from her hindquarters. The poor beast has collapsed on her side, lathering at the snout, gasping for air. Sigi presses both hands on the ewe’s breast, to keep her lungs moving. I have her hind legs pulled apart to widen her birthing cleft while Ulph slips the full length of his arm into the passage, feeling for what he can find inside her swollen girth.

  ‘She looks in bad shape,’ says Haldis, and sips at the ale she had brought for Ulph. ‘Are we going to lose her?’

  ‘Not if I can help, young mistress,’ says Ulph, without lifting his eyes. He swivels his arm, pummels and probes inside the animal, all the while whispering to the frightened ewe, not in words we understand, but in sheepish little sounds she seems to recognise.

  ‘Why not pull out the lamb’s fore-legs?’ asks Sigi. ‘Won’t that make the ewe push?’

  ‘But which legs to pull?’ says Ulph. ‘They are all tangled, too many legs in here.’

  ‘What are you on about?’ says Haldis.

  ‘Two hearts beating,’ replies Ulph. ‘Twinlings she has, but her young ones are tangled, stuck body to body. I can’t grab one without hurting the other.’

  The first of the lambs is born dead. Ulph goes off to skin the little body. He will butcher it for his favourite hound. It leaves Sigi and me to deliver the sibling. The second bundle out of the sheep’s belly is weak, barely alive. He will grow to a ram, if he is lucky, or be gelded, and live his life as a woolback on the fells. With tongue out and eyes closed, sniffing blindly from a wrinkled snout, he finally finds the teat. While he suckles, the mother-ewe licks and muzzles, unmindful of the one that died.

  Sigi studies lamb and ewe, and turns to Haldis. ‘Will Bera have a child from Bane? Is that bastard’s blood in her veins?’

  ‘Too soon to say,’ replies Haldis, ‘but from what your sister has told me, it is unlikely. You can rest easy on that at least.’

  ‘How can we rest easy? Bane has got away with it.’

  Haldis doesn’t answer me right away. She takes a long swig of ale, and almost empties the pot meant for Ulph. ‘You should have gone after the bastard, the pair of you,’ she says, ‘and had it out with him.’ She beats the ground at my feet with her stick. ‘If I were a man, I’d have got hold of him, left him senseless or dead — he would never have walked again.’

  ‘He was on horseback,’ I reply lamely, ‘and us on foot. We weren’t likely to catch him.’

  ‘He was over salmon-river,’ adds Sigi, ‘and safe in Laxvik by the time the girl told us what happened. At first we thought it was she and not Bera who was forced.’

  Haldis is having none of it. ‘To hell and back, or to Laxvik, why didn’t you give chase? You should have followed him — no matter where he ran to!’

  ‘But Haldis, we had to bring Bera home.’

  ‘Da would never have forgiven us,’ says Sigi, ‘if we had left her and gone after Bane.’

  ‘That was your mistake,’ says Haldis, ‘you missed the chance for hot pursuit — the chance to shed blood on the day. To take him down there and then — that was our due. Don’t you see? Our right to blood justice was lost once Da was told. You must have known that he would want it settled by law. Trust in the law! Where has that got us?’

  *

  ‘Now, while the ale is fresh,’ says Haldis, raising her voice to me. ‘I want the jug taken now, to the smithy-hole.’ She has ladled buttermilk ale to overflowing in a pewter table-jug, a big thirst-quencher to be shared by Da and Snorri. Without answering, I lick the froth dripping on the table top. Svena should fetch the ale — she has been empty-handed all morning. Or one of the dairy maids could be sent for. ‘Will you do it today or next week?’ Haldis asks bitingly. ‘My hands are full. Are you taking the ale for me or not?’

  ‘I will, I will. Leave it to me.’ I lift the table-jug in two hands, take a sip to stop it from spilling, and make for the door.

  She calls after me in a softer, sisterly voice. ‘Don’t drink down the whole jug before you get there.’

  When I reach the cinder path in front of the smithy, I see steam escaping from the eaves. The forge roof is blackened with soot. A square of turves has been taken off the roof to make an opening through which smoke can escape. The turves are stacked at the doorway, their undersides scorched by heat and grime.

  I remember, as a child, old man Jarl and his blacksmith doing hammer work outside in the open air. Jarl made it a showy affair — almost a priestly ritual — brandishing lumps of yellow-hot metal straight from the fire in front of an admiring crowd. Father is more discreet. He keeps anvil and cooling tub in the smithy-hole — close at hand to furnace and hearth — plying his secret art within four walls.

  Light flashes through the narrow entrance, a glowing shaft of heat blowing in my face. Father has his back to me. He is in a leather apron, boots to the knees, bare shoulders dappled by flamelight, soot and sweat. He skims scum from the surface of the molten iron, while Snorri, with a foot on the bellows, flares the fire from underneath.

  Snorri is facing me, stripped to the waist. He has on an odd-matched pair of boots, borrowed to protect his feet from sparks of char-wood off the furnace. The outsized boots make his movements ungainly as he feeds the fire with air. He looks up, a quick glance, sees the buttermilk ale and smiles his harelip smile. Father doesn’t take his eye off the smelting. He has both fires going — the smelter fire inside the furnace, and the open hearth for tempering. The heat is strong on my face.

  Father’s voice into the flames, ‘Snorri, do it now. Open the drain, run off the slag.’

  I have seen it done many times before. Snorri will release the bung, a slow-burning bung of wet turf, from the base of the furnace. Molten slag will pour along a gutter, and down into the sand-pit to cool. As the waste drains off, it leaves behind a bloom of soft iron — yellow-hot — stuck to the inner walls of the furnace. Father will harvest the bloom with rake and scraper, transfer it by tongs to his forging fire, and pound the lump under his hammer. Snorri, on Father’s word, lifts a poker to break the bung. I cover my eyes, I know to expect blinding heat — a flare of light will fill the smithy-hole.

  A flash! At the same time the pewter table-jug drops out of my hands. It crashes to the ground — puddles of ale everywhere, splashes of scorched ale hissing on the furnace. Snorri, his boots too big for him, totters forward, stumbles back, dropping the poker. Another flash leaps from the drain-hole, a blinding light. The slag is out. The bung is broken, but not with a poker, and not by Snorri’s hand. There! He has rolled into the sand, boots and body motionless — he is out cold. From the furnace a long tongue of molten slag has escaped into the drain, spi
tting vapours yellow-hot. The tongue licks along the gutter towards the sand-pit — towards the stricken body of Snorri. If he is not pulled at once from the pit, he will be overrun by red-hot slag.

  Father has hurled aside rake and tongs. One stride, two, and he is in the sand. While I am reaching down from above the pit, Snorri’s neck slips from my hand.

  ‘Lift him by the shoulders, turn him face-up!’ I do as Father asks, while he grabs Snorri’s legs.

  One more pull and Snorri will be clear of the gutter.

  ‘Get out of there, Da!’

  ‘Pull!’ is his only word of reply. The molten slag has reached the end of the gutter. Snorri’s beard is frizzled by the fierce heat close up — mine too — Father’s brow is flaking skin. We have him. We have Snorri clear of the pit.

  ‘Thor’s sake, Da, watch out!’

  The first puddle of slag drops fireless into the pit; spreading, smoking flameless, sinking in the sand. Another spill, sudden behind the first — this one rapid, a vein of fire, aflame — scorches the toe of Father’s boot. Boot-leather flashes — flash-burns to nothing, goes up in smoke — leather gone in a trice — now Father’s bared flesh in flame!

  Father leaps from the sand, hopping on one foot, yelling in agony. A gaping hole of leather in his boot, stubs of smoking flesh, black blistered flesh. Where Father’s toes should be — the wasted stump-end of a foot. The big man passes out. His height and weight pull me to the ground — between us on the smithy floor one of Snorri’s outsize boots.

  Chapter 30

  Gathering sheep at winter-fall, seeing them safe off the fells — a blind chase in mountain mist for two or three days — never passes without moments of panic and near disaster. From what we have seen of the first day, this year’s round-up promises no different.

  The tight chasms that woolbacks get into, to find grazing near the end of growing season, make even a shepherd’s eyes spin. And sheep, once stranded on hopelessly high ledges, having sensed the danger they are in, are not easily coaxed or hauled to safety.

  Since we left at daybreak it has been impossible to see the peaks. The mists drift or lift a little, as rain comes or goes. Off the beaten track is treacherous under hoof — more ground can be covered on foot than on horseback.

  Srelni keeps me in sight and comes to my whistle, or follows after, without a whistle, while I go clambering over wet shale, skidding on slopes of greasy turf, or wade knee-deep through clumpy bogs.

  Daylight is short. There are eleven of us on the fells. We have split into three ridings to cover the wide area — east, northeast and west. Father has headed west to Gjother fell. It did my heart good to see him out again on a horse. He has taken Snorri with him and two farm-hands from the steading. The east fells are where Sigi is; he has Lar and the Grisedale lads — Pilson and Bjorn — these two have joined us on day-hire. I have ridden northeast; Ulph and Olaf are with me on foot.

  The plan is to muster as many sheep as we can. We won’t find them all. We will gather with what we have two days from now, in Dugdale meadows, three rasts out of Osvik. We will let the flocks have their fill on hay stubble for up to a week before driving them home to winter fold in Osvellir.

  Ulph and Snorri will go up-fell again in a day or two, searching for strays, until the weather worsens. The unlucky ones we have failed to find will be left to winter on the fell, taking their chances in the wild — if they have not been nabbed on the sly by our neighbours. Our first instalment for the south shore leases is due this week from guothie Klep. We are to tryst with his men in Dugdale for the hand-over. They will be checked, one by one, for health and fleece. The count should be ten-score black wethers. Father can’t wait to see the blackies. The prospect of them joining our herd has kept him going all summer.

  Since his accident in the smithy-hole Father has been laid up in the steading. The broiling slag that escaped from the furnace devoured the front of his foot, taking all his toes. He sank into a fever the first two days from the shock of his burns. Sigi and I feared the worst, but Haldis never doubted her salves. She changed Father’s dressings twice a day, and cleaned his sores with honey and oats. Once the cure was underway, she set the meat maggots to work — to feed on the rotted skin — cleaning up the scaly mess of burnt flesh.

  Father is left with little more than a scarred stump for a foot— not a pretty sight, swollen and yellowish-red — no feeling in it from the ankle down, but as Bera says every night to encourage him, while she kneels at his bunk to bathe his leg in a basin of saltwater, ‘Be grateful, Da, at least your wounds are clean.’

  If only it weren’t for the unwholesome swelling.

  Father is not on his feet — not as he should be. Until today he would venture no farther than barn or dairy. Heading into Gjother Fell is a test of his nerve and his recovery. This morning, he put a brave face on it; he dug his numbed foot into the stirrup — unlike him to favour a saddle — and cantered into morning mist, as if nothing untoward had happened.

  *

  ‘No, Ulph,’ shouts Olaf, clutching his throat in panic and stealing a glance over the ravine. You won’t catch me going down there, not on a day like this, it’s not safe, man!’

  ‘We can do it with ropes,’ says Ulph. ‘What do you say, young master?’ We are on a pinnacle of rock with barely enough space for three of us to stand. Ulph has spotted a sheep stranded below the head of a steep-sided ghyll. It’s a young woolback, a yearling, short fleece and stubby horns. One wrong move on the ledge and our sheep will plunge into the forse. We hear the falls and foaming torrents below — we can’t see the running waters through a heavy mist.

  ‘How can we leave him?’ I reply. ‘It is worth a try. Can we find a way down, Ulph? What do you reckon?’

  ‘You are mad,’ shouts Olaf. ‘It’s too big a risk. The dumb creature will survive without our help. You can round him up with the strays.’

  Olaf’s cowardly words decide it for me. ‘Don’t worry, Olaf, we are not asking you to risk your life, are we?’ And with that I am off, climbing back up the fell to collect the ropes from Srelni.

  ‘Here, young master,’ says Ulph, ‘I will take the ropes. You stay with the horse. Leave the wether to me. I know how to sheep-talk with these young ones.’

  Olaf stays on the pinnacle and feeds the rope back to me, while I lead Srelni from the ghyll into a sunken hollow above us. My horse can dig his hooves in for as long as the rescue lasts. The sorrel, with a rope fastened to his neck, will take the weight of Ulph. Whatever happens to the sheep, at least the man will be safe.

  Ulph binds the safety-line to shoulders and waist. Once he has fastened a rope on the wether, Olaf and I — with Srelni at our backs — will haul from the ledge and bring them to safety. Ulph tests for a footing. He tucks the haul-rope for the sheep in his belt, hitches up his shepherd’s serk, and slides barefoot past a stump of dead juniper. He can’t grip the roots for fear they will pull away, but runs his toes along as a guide, feeling for a safe toe-hold. The root holes are like steps in the loose shale.

  Ulph stops for rest, stands on the first ledge of turf, the lush green that enticed the woolback to wander into the ghyll. He calms the sheep, not that we hear what he says, or the animal’s response, above the noise of the falls. All we see are the motions of Ulph’s mouth and beard, and the black snout of the wether, blandly chewing grass with a curl of the lips.

  Now Ulph is on the move, to get closer to the stray, climbing lower, making for the second ledge of turf. He cuts sideways among rowan trees that cling dwarfishly to crevices of moss between the rocks. The waxy rowan-berries seem to glow in the mist. Some — soft and red-ripe — are dragged from the fronds, crushed between dangling rope and rock.

  The safety-line tightens, going straight as a rod, stretching from Ulph’s shoulder to the pinnacle where Olaf and I are waiting. The rope shudders taut behind us. A horsy snort from the sorrel, a protest as his four stout legs takes the weight of the man. Ulph’s life is fastened by a rope. Another snort from Srel
ni, this time of power and pride, but I may have imagined it — it is impossible to hear a thing beyond the wind on the fell and the raging water from the falls.

  The cloud thickens in the ghyll — sheep and shepherd swallowed from sight. All that we see, disappearing into mist below, are two ropes: the safety-rope that secures Ulph to the top, which keeps stiff as a rod, and the other, the line of rescue intended for the stranded sheep, which falls flabby and dangling. No movement from the safety-rope — not even a tremor, nothing — no tugging on the second rope to signal that Ulph is ready for us to haul the sheep to safety.

  ‘Ulph!’ Olaf shouts into the empty mist. ‘Ulph! In Thor’s name, where are you?’ The crofter-man looks accusingly at me. ‘He’s gone. I told you, Kregin, I told you we shouldn’t try!’

  ‘Stay here, Olaf,’ I reply. ‘Don’t move, don’t let go of the ropes. I have to check on Srelni. The horse must be wondering why he has been left alone for so long.’

  ‘Poor man,’ Olaf shouts back at me. ‘What’s happened to him?’

  ‘I don’t know. Your guess is as good as mine. I have to go check on the horse. We can’t ease tension on the rope. If we do, we may lose Ulph into the ghyll.’

  As I am turning to go, the words bolt from Olaf’s mouth — they stop me in my tracks. ‘If Ulph has fallen to his death, it won’t bother you.’

  ‘What are you on about?’

  ‘Don’t get me wrong, young master. I am not saying you’d harm him, not on purpose, but after what he did at Asgrim’s fold, I’m sure you won’t mind seeing the end of him. Guothie Leif has lost face — lost a fortune — and you have lost your bride. It is all down to Ulph.’

  I am seething with anger at Olaf — for what he has said — and for having chosen this moment to say it. I must see to the horse, see to the rope, but I can’t leave it at that. ‘How can it be Ulph’s fault? We arrived together at Asgrim’s fold, the three of us.’

  ‘Yes, but when your back was turned, Ulph set fire to the forge. ’