The Golden Wolf

by Linnea Hartsuyker

  Sigurd waved to Einar as the ship beached. He climbed down, holding a strange object in his right hand. As soon as his boots touched the shore, he held it up: a severed head, gray and rotting. In death, the upper lip had drawn up, revealing the protruding incisor of Melbrid Tooth, sticking straight forward like a walrus’s tusk.

  “We have been successful,” Sigurd announced. Einar could not tell if the horrible smell coming from him was the head, or the gore caked onto his clothes, and the clothes of his men. His eyes were strangely bright, as were the eyes of some of his men. Einar remembered a tale that Alfrith had told one long winter night, about a company of undead sailors, trying to recruit more members for their grisly crew. It had given Einar nightmares for years.

  Then Sigurd grinned, and he was once again Einar’s friendly uncle, no matter how gruesome his trophy. “More than successful. I met up with an enemy that has done us much wrong, and made an end to him.”

  Sigurd’s men began to cheer, and the shouts resolved themselves into a chant, “Sigurd the Mighty! Sigurd the Mighty!” Sigurd flushed, and grinned, holding the head up high, then swung it down by his leg again.

  “Welcome,” said Einar with real warmth. He wondered what his father would think to hear Sigurd given the same byname that he had. “The Mighty”—few men were called that in earnest. Sigurd must have fought a great battle.

  “I brought this so you could see he is truly dead,” said Sigurd. “Melbrid Tooth is one of the reasons your brother fell.”

  “Father,” cried Sigurd’s son, Olaf, “when are you going to burn that thing?” Olaf looked cleaner than the others, though his cheeks wore a hectic pink that troubled Einar.

  Sigurd shook the trophy at his son, who waved his hands to ward it off. Pooled blood and decay had blackened the cut edges of its neck.

  “After we feast,” said Sigurd. “I have brought back more than just this head, glad as I am to have it. I also have many sacks of grain and big cheeses made by Scottish monks. No one here will starve this winter!” The Orkneymen who had assembled to greet Sigurd’s ship cheered.

  True to his word, the head sat next to Sigurd during his welcome feast, and Sigurd proposed a toast to their fallen enemy and fed him a sip from his cup. Sigurd told of the battle—not well, but thoroughly, and when he used the head as a prop for his tale, his men cheered. Einar still thought his eyes looked strange, a little glassy, even before he grew drunk on strong Orkney ale, but perhaps he was only tired from his journey.

  As Sigurd turned to set down the head Freydis, who had been refilling his cup, pointed at his leg, and asked, “Did you take a wound in the fighting?”

  Sigurd stood up and showed the rip in his trousers that Freydis had noticed. “It’s only a small wound—I think this fellow’s tooth gave it to me!” He held up Melbrid’s head again, pulling up the mouth to show his famous tooth. “Perhaps he was trying to get revenge!”

  * * *

  When Einar joined Freydis in bed the next night, she said to him, “I examined the wound on Sigurd’s thigh today.”

  “That scratch?” Einar asked. “It is nothing.”

  “It is not nothing,” she replied. “It will likely kill him.”

  “Did your crones tell you that?” Einar asked.

  “No, the smell tells me that. He has an infection, and it is too high up on his leg to cut it off, even if he were willing to risk it. He will die, and soon.”

  Freydis washed the wound several times the next day with wine, but the following day his entire leg was red and swollen, the streaks of blood poisoning stretching up into his groin and over his belly. He cried out in agony whenever anyone touched him. One slender slash of red extended up to his navel. Were it not for the suppurating wound below, it would look like nothing more than a scratch. A love scratch, perhaps. But Sigurd would never love another woman.

  “Einar, please kill me,” he begged. “Do not let me die like this.”

  Einar promised to help him, though looking at the wound made him feel ill, and he left to talk to Freydis, who was grinding some herbs in the kitchen.

  “Can you do nothing for him?” he asked Freydis. “Must he die like this, like a coward?”

  “I can give him an easy death,” said Freydis, gesturing at the powder in her mortar, “but only you can give him a warrior’s death. You must ask him what he wants.”

  Freydis brought Olaf into the chamber to bid farewell to his father, and then led the boy out again, both of their faces wet with tears. Einar stood outside Sigurd’s chamber, gripping his dagger.

  “You can find another of his men to do this for him,” she said. “He is well loved. Someone will be willing to send him to Valhalla other than you.”

  “No,” said Einar. “I should do this. I can do this for him, even if I failed him.”

  “How did you fail him?” Freydis asked.

  “I should have gone with him to Scotland.”

  “He asked you to stay.” She shook her head. “This is the strangest of deaths, so strange that it must be ordained by the gods. You could not have prevented it if you were there.”

  He did not believe her, and he gripped his dagger.

  “Put that down for a moment,” she said. She pulled his hand to her neck, to the place that always made her shiver with pleasure when he kissed her there. “There is a great vein here. If you want to give him a kind death, do not cut his throat and watch him choke on it. Cut this vein, deeply, and he will bleed away in an instant.”

  “You have given this a great deal of thought,” said Einar. “How do you know how to kill a man?”

  “I have had teachers, for both good and ill. I saw Hallbjorn kill one of Aldi’s men by cutting his throat, and this is quicker.” She pressed his fingers against her neck and he felt the pulse there. “Now go speak with him,” she said.

  Einar had never wanted to do anything less. At least Freydis had given Sigurd herbs to take away the pain, to bring him closer to death. She could still give him a peaceful death, if he wished it.

  “Your wife is skilled,” said Sigurd. “I feel more clearheaded.” He shifted in his bed, sending a waft of his wound’s odor to Einar’s nose.

  “She wanted me to ask if you wanted to die from her herbs, or have a warrior’s death,” said Einar, trying not to flinch.

  Sigurd’s eyes washed with tears. “She is skilled but she cannot heal me,” he said. “I thought not.”

  “No, she cannot,” Einar said. He stood silently next to Sigurd. His face was gray and sweaty, and his blond hair looked like dried winter grass.

  “I killed Melbrid Tooth,” said Sigurd. “My men—they called me ‘Mighty.’ Tell your father.”

  “He disowned me,” said Einar.

  “He loves you,” said Sigurd. “Tell him.”

  “I will,” Einar promised. “He loves you too.”

  Sigurd smiled brokenly. “He never thought much of me,” he said.

  “He did,” said Einar. “Enough to give you Orkney.”

  “And look what I’ve made of it,” he replied. “At least I will die here.” A crisis of pain gripped him, and he cursed, flexing his hands against the empty air, and then reached out and gripped Einar’s hand. “Give me my sword, and then kill me. I want a chance at Odin’s hall of warriors. Perhaps I will see Ivar there.”

  Now Einar began to weep—these islands would claim his uncle as they had his brother. Was there no end to the deaths he must witness before finding the peace of his own?

  He put Sigurd’s sword into his hand, though he could barely grasp it. “Tell me when you’re ready,” he said.

  “My son, Olaf,” said Sigurd. “Look after him until he is ready to be jarl.”

  “I will,” Einar promised.

  Sigurd sighed heavily. “What a foolish way to die,” he said, half to himself. Einar feared to touch him anywhere that might give him more agony, but he did brush Sigurd’s sodden hair off his forehead. Sigurd closed his eyes, and Einar hoped he would die then, without Einar�
�s blow. But then he opened them and looked up at Einar. “Do it,” he said. “I am ready.”

  39

  Ragnvald’s journey up Geiranger Fjord took a full five days, and on each day, Ivar’s ghost seemed closer. He had sailed a small boat with his sons past some of these waterfalls, and pointed out the warrior’s visage in the cliff’s face, where he had nearly drowned as a young man, after Solvi slashed his face and threw him into the fjord. Ivar would never grow beyond the age Ragnvald had been when he had seen his vision of Harald’s victory as a golden wolf under these waters.

  The household came out to meet Ragnvald when he reached Tafjord, forming a crowd at the shore, cheering, though Ragnvald heard some uncertainty. He saw Ivar everywhere, in the shoulders of the plain young man who helped pull the boat up through the marsh at the fjord’s end, in Hilda’s thick brown hair, the same shade that Ivar’s had been, and in his young sons by Alfrith, who both had dark eyes like Ivar’s. Hilda did not yet know what had happened, and Ragnvald could hardly meet her gaze. At least he still had his skald with him, to tell the full story, but he owed Hilda the words from his own lips.

  “Thank you for this welcome,” he said to those assembled. “I come with both good tidings and ill. King Harald has been successful in Orkney, and claimed those islands for Norway. My stepbrother Sigurd now rules there. Harald and his sons will return after they have routed the rebels out of their strongholds in Scotland. They will surely have great success and return to Norway, their ships swollen with treasure.”

  He should have started with the bad news and gone on to the good, but he knew that once he told of Ivar’s death, he would be able to say no more. “Some good men have died brave deaths, though,” he said. “My stepbrother Hallbjorn, and”—he took a deep breath, as his throat threatened to close off—“my own son Ivar.”

  A cry of dismay went up from many throats, for Ivar had been well loved, a handsome boy with a sunny disposition, who had grown into a happy young man. Ragnvald gestured to his skald, who said that he would tell the whole story that evening. Hilda opened her arms, welcoming and comforting Ragnvald as she had not since Rolli’s outlawry. She looked as stunned as he felt when he first heard the news from Svanhild’s lips, too frozen for tears.

  At length he let Hilda go and she walked with him, taking his elbow so she could support him if he needed. They passed Alfrith, who looked at Ragnvald with her deep, black eyes that saw too much, before she bowed her head in welcome. She would forgive him anything, but she would force him to look at the shameful things he had done, if not immediately, then when they turned to dreams that needed her wisdom to understand.

  Ragnvald’s scouts along the fjord had warned the household of his coming, so Hilda had prepared a rich welcome feast. He made a toast to bless the bounty of his Tafjord household and the loyalty of the warriors who had remained behind, hardly hearing the words as he spoke them, and then drained his glass of ale in one gulp. He drank the next one slowly, but after the first few courses, as his skald began to tell the story of the battle, Ragnvald drank more heavily. His younger self would have scorned this old man, full of shame and fear, lacking all discipline. But that young man had never lost a son.

  Ragnvald listened to the tale of the battle, of Ivar’s bravery in manning one of the decoy ships, how the gods of the sea wanted him, but he would not let them take him, dying instead with his sword in his hand. He did not speak of Ragnvald’s last argument with Einar. Ivar would hate that Ragnvald had left Einar behind. But he was not around to argue for his brother anymore.

  The last time Ragnvald had seen Hilda, she had blazed with anger, looking younger than she had in years. Now, with the news of Ivar’s death, she looked old again, the silver strands in her thick braid standing out more clearly, her face dull and tired. When his skald was done speaking, she sat down next to Ragnvald in his chair.

  “Where is Einar?” she asked in a low voice. “He can be a comfort to me with Ivar gone.” She and Einar had grown close during her father’s final years, when he had taught them both the law that he had learned from his own father.

  “He stayed in Orkney with Sigurd,” said Ragnvald.

  Hilda blinked. “He did not want to return with you? His father? Or come to me? I thought him a better son than that.”

  Ragnvald gritted his teeth. “He did not keep his brother from death, so he is not the son I thought he was.”

  “Was it his fault?” Hilda asked.

  “He swore an oath to protect his brother, and he failed,” said Ragnvald. “What more is there to say?”

  He heard the tale of battle taken up again and, out of the corner of his eye, saw Hilda sit up straight when Rolli’s name was mentioned. “You did not tell me Rolli was there,” she said. Her voice sounded like a boulder dragged across rough ground, halting and scraping.

  “He came with Solvi,” said Ragnvald.

  Hilda seemed not to hear him. “Surely, if one good thing can come from the Orkney battles, it is Rolli’s return. Why did he not come with you?”

  “He made cause with Harald’s oldest enemy,” said Ragnvald. “He cannot be allowed to return.”

  “So in this journey, you have lost three sons,” she said in a low whisper, “two of them needlessly, through your own pride and folly.”

  She might be able to understand the true reason for his decision, that Rolli would be safer away from him, from the doom that his fate promised him, but he had no more words, so he only called for more ale and drank enough that he did not care what she thought any longer.

  * * *

  In the days after Ragnvald’s homecoming, he often felt Thorir’s eyes upon him, and heard Thorir’s name in the chattering of servants, which always quieted when he came near. They had good reason to discuss him, since he would one day be their ruler.

  Thorir spent his days sparring with Ragnvald’s warriors. Once when Ragnvald asked where he was, his steward told him Thorir had taken a horse to ride out to the nearby farms to see how the summer growing season was treating them. Thorir had always been the most politic of Ragnvald’s sons, best at adapting himself to the moment. This moment required grieving, so that was what Thorir did, even as he carried out the tasks of the likely heir.

  He had grown less awkward in the year since their journey to Jutland, and his beard was coming in better now, a uniform fur of soft brown over his jawline, though it would be a few years until it did not seem a youth’s self-conscious affectation. His expression was always sober when Ragnvald saw him, even when his fellows were laughing. Ragnvald mistrusted the perfection of his performance, but that skill would help him in the land of Harald’s sons, all of whom loved flattery.

  A month after Ragnvald’s return, a horse trader traveled overland to Tafjord escorting a fine stallion and mare as gifts for Ragnvald, along with an invitation to join Harald in Nidaros at Yule. After the trader had been given ale and a place to rest, Ragnvald said to Thorir, who had been with him to receive their guest, “This stallion is yours if you like him. Let us ride.”

  They followed the path up and out of the bowl that the cliffs and hills made around Tafjord, up to the crest that overlooked Geiranger Fjord. They rode without speaking, accompanied only by the breathing of their horses, and the sigh of pine needles underfoot, which turned to the crunch of stone when they reached the crest of the cliff. From this vantage, the whole of the fjord stretched out below. One of Ragnvald’s scouts had a lookout here, marked by a ring of stones and a blackened patch of earth.

  “It is a blessing that you stayed here to care for your mother,” said Ragnvald as they looked down at the sapphire water.

  Thorir nodded, but said nothing. The sun was shining and the fields below striped with green and yellow. For a moment, their beauty made Ragnvald feel as though he could truly live after Ivar’s death, though that thought itself brought pain and guilt.

  “What is the use of all of this?” Ragnvald asked out loud, not thinking Thorir would have an answer either.


  “It is fate, I suppose,” said Thorir. “The thread of a man’s life is measured, and the Norns know where they will put its end.”

  That trick of knowing Ragnvald’s thought and answering it reminded him of Oddi for a moment. “So say seers and priests,” he replied. Some force shaped the moments in between, though. Ragnvald looked down at the bend in the fjord called Solskel, the site of one of his greatest gambles for Harald, and greatest triumphs.

  “What did Einar do?” Thorir asked quietly. “So I may avoid his mistakes.”

  Ragnvald felt a wave of horror and shame so intense it stole his vision for a moment. Thorir deserved a better father than the broken man who had cut off one of his sons as cruelly as Harald’s executioners had severed hands and feet after the battle of Solskel. Ragnvald had burned the charnel house where that sentence was carried out and caused the ashes to be raked away. Marsh grasses had reclaimed the ground, the site erased, though the deed and its effects never could be.

  “He was never my heir,” said Ragnvald, “not as Ivar was and you are now. Do not fear.”

  “But what did he do?” Thorir asked plaintively. “I have heard it was because he failed to protect Ivar, but Einar avenged him, and a man’s life is measured. It was the end of Ivar’s then. It must have been. I am grieved that Ivar is gone, but he was fated to die then—how could Einar have done any different?”

  He prayed Thorir would never know the pain of losing his firstborn son, but if he did, he might one day understand how Ragnvald felt now. “I cannot tell you,” he said. Einar’s affair with Gyda had made him untrustworthy once, and Ivar’s death a second time. Keeping Einar away meant he need not fear a third. “But for his safety and the safety of our family, he must remain in exile. Do not ask me again, and do not fear for yourself. You are my son and heir. You will rule in Maer when I am gone.”

  If it had been Einar here with him, he would have spoken of Halfdan next, of his fears that Halfdan meant to rebel against his father again, and kill Ragnvald and his sons in the process. But Thorir looked at him with awe and fear—he was not yet old enough to believe that his father had any doubts.