Viking Warrior

by Judson Roberts

  The rider shook his head. Now his face did show distress.

  “I cannot say. We knew, of course, of the raid Haakon had sailed on. One of my comrades sailed with him on his ship. They have not been gone so long, though, that we looked for Haakon’s return. What you have told me is grave news, indeed. You must tell me more so I can carry this tale to the king. If Haakon and the warriors who journeyed with him may be lost, Horik will want to know.”

  “If you have been traveling for so long you must be weary,” Harald said. “I am Harald, eldest son of Hrorik, and this is my brother, Halfdan. These are my lands now. You are welcome to break your journey and rest here, and I will tell you all I know of the raid on England, though I cannot say with certainty whether Haakon was one of the many who found their doom there.”

  That evening after we’d dined, we sat around the main hearth drinking, while Harald recounted his tale of the ill-fated voyage to England.

  “You carry the red arrow that summons chieftains to serve the king in war,” Harald said, when he’d finished his telling. It was a statement, but a question, too.

  “Aye,” Arnulf answered, nodding his head. “The king is calling a war council. All of his jarls and many great chieftains are being summoned. Hrorik was one of the chieftains whose counsel he sought. The king wishes to carry war to the Franks. Travelers from the Frankish lands have told him that the Frankish kings fight among themselves and weaken their own defenses.”

  I was surprised to hear Arnulf speak of Frankish kings. I knew little of the Franks—slaves have no need to learn of foreign kings and lands, and Harald’s lessons so far had not included any such instruction. Though I had, in years past, heard tales told in the evenings about the Franks. They were the most powerful of the enemies of the Danes. As all Danes did, I knew our lands had been invaded many years ago by their King Charles, he whose vanity led him to call himself the Great. And the land of the Danes had been attacked again by the son who had succeeded him. I’d always thought, from the tales I’d heard, that the Franks had only one king, and I said as much to Harald.

  “For many years that was true,” he said, “but no more. The old King Charles ruled all of the Franks’ lands. He was a fierce warlord who slew many of the Saxon tribes who once lived to the south of our kingdom, and he took their lands for his own people. His son was a doughty warrior, too, and also ruled the Frankish kingdom alone. But the old king’s grandsons could not agree among themselves who should rule when their father died. They carved the Frankish lands into three kingdoms, each claiming one.”

  Arnulf nodded his head. “But they are greedy men, and all three still dream of being the one king of the Franks, so they fight each other constantly. It is a good thing when your enemy sheds his own blood and weakens himself before you even attack.”

  “Perhaps we should go to this council, my brother, and hear of King Horik’s plans for war,” Harald said to me, nudging me in the ribs with his elbow and grinning. “Perhaps we can show the Franks how well you’ve learned your lessons.”

  “That will not be possible,” Arnulf said.

  Harald looked at him coldly. It was a strange thing about Harald. His countenance usually displayed his mood for all to see, when he was in good spirits. But if he felt someone had insulted his honor—something few who knew him dared to do—all signs of emotion vanished from his face and bearing. I personally had seen it happen only once before, when Toke, Gunhild’s son by her first marriage, still lived on our estate. There was no brotherly affection between Harald and Toke. But then, Toke had seemed to feel no affection for anyone, or anything. He was a berserk.

  “I am chieftain here, now that Hrorik is dead,” Harald said in a quiet voice. “Why should I not attend the king’s council in his stead?”

  “It is but a small council the king has sent me and others to summon,” Arnulf replied. “Only his jarls and a few chieftains whose counsel he has found to be wise in the past. Your name is not on the list. I am sorry, and mean you no offense. It is not my decision, though. I have no power to invite you in the stead of Hrorik, your father. But I am certain that if the council does vote for war, your sword, and those of the men you command, will be welcome.”

  “No doubt,” Harald said. He spoke no more that evening. A short time later he excused himself and retired to his bed.

  Arnulf left early the next morning. All that day and the next, Harald seemed in an ill humor. It was a side of him I had not seen before. He did not laugh or even smile during our practice bouts, as was normally his wont, but slashed and hacked at me with grim intensity.

  All in the household could sense Harald’s simmering anger, and felt uneasy because of it. The second night, as we sat at dinner, Sigrid took it upon herself to try and lift his spirits.

  “I have a taste for venison,” she said and sighed. “I tire of salted pork and smoked fish. I feel as though we have been eating them all winter.”

  Gunhild, who was standing by the hearth, chimed in. “I, too, would love fresh game. It has been long since we’ve had some. Perhaps, Harald, you and Halfdan could do something useful for a change and go hunting.”

  Leave it to Gunhild. Sigrid had hoped to distract Harald from his anger at the slight he felt Arnulf had given his honor and status, but Gunhild, in trying to assist, managed to insult him.

  Harald, who’d been drinking heavily that night, drained the last of the ale in his cup, and set it down with a loud thump on the table. He belched loudly in Gunhild’s direction. She frowned in response and turned away, which seemed to please him. Sigrid smiled sweetly at him, though I thought her eyes betrayed a nervousness behind the smile.

  “Well then, Halfdan,” Harald said to me. “Since my sister has a taste for venison, I suppose that tomorrow I must begin trying to teach you to shoot a bow. It will be difficult. A bow is not an easy weapon to learn. We can only make a beginning. But after I show you the rudiments of shooting a bow, we will take a rest from your lessons and hunt. Hopefully we’ll find a deer, and I can show you how it is done.”

  Both Sigrid and Gunhild hid smiles behind their hands, but the ale in his belly and head kept Harald from noticing.

  “Let me show you my bow,” Harald added and left the table. A few moments later, he returned bearing the bow, and handed it to me. “Is it not a fine one?”

  I looked at it briefly, then laid it on the table and resumed eating. It was a well made bow that stood as tall as Harald’s shoulder, with broad flattened limbs that tapered to a rounded grip in the center. I would not call it a fine bow, though.

  “It’s a good bow. It should be,” I said, between mouthfuls. “I made it.”

  Harald sat back and frowned. “How can this be? For years, Gudrod the Carpenter has made all of the bows and arrows for our household. He made this bow. He made Hrorik’s bow. He makes the bows for all the carls who live here.”

  I shook my head.

  “When I was just a young boy,” I told Harald, “Gudrod showed me how to cut a stave from a tree, and shape the stave into a bow. He showed me how to split out shafts and turn them into arrows. He showed me because my hands have a cleverness in them, and he wished to train a helper to aid him with the carpentry work on this farm. It was not long after Gudrod taught me, that he told me I could find the bow hidden in the wood better than he. For over three years now, it has been I who has made every bow in this household.”

  Harald shook his head in amazement. It did not surprise me that he had not known. The doings of thralls had never interested him. I’d been virtually invisible to Harald until I became his brother.

  “Well, for tomorrow’s lessons, and afterwards for our hunt, you can use Hrorik’s bow. I suppose you made it, too?” he asked. I nodded. He shook his head. “A thrall that makes bows,” he said. “I have never heard of such a thing. I suppose we’re lucky you did not make one for yourself.”

  I grinned. “Let me show you my bow,” I told him. I left the longhouse and walked to the carpentry shed where Gudr
od had stored the bow he’d allowed me to make for myself. I had not thought to bring it into the longhouse since I’d been freed.

  It had been a little over a year since Gudrod had told me I could make a bow for myself. I’d chosen to make a longbow. Gudrod had one, and had showed me how. It was more difficult, he’d explained, to shape such a bow’s limbs, for they were rounded rather than flat, and had to be carefully tapered from grip to tip to bend in an even arc when the bow was drawn. With such a shape, the limbs needed extra length to achieve a smooth and even draw, and powerful cast. Most men, Gudrod had explained, found the length of such bows unwieldy, and chose to shoot a flatbow instead, despite the fact that a well-crafted longbow was capable of greater power and range.

  I’d lavished care in my bow’s crafting, for as a thrall, it was the only thing of any value I’d possessed. It was made of yew, as all our bows were, and stretched, tip to tip, almost two hands taller than I stood. I’d wrapped its center, where I gripped it with my hand, with leather. The end of each limb I’d capped with a tip of horn, which I’d notched to hold the ends of the bowstring. I’d sharpened the horn tips to fine points on their ends, and had decorated the socket of each where they joined to the end of the wood limb with a narrow ring I’d hammered from scraps of bronze Gunnar the Blacksmith had given me. Gudrod had smiled at that touch. “You are making a bow fit for a jarl,” he’d said. “Be careful. If you draw attention to this bow you are likely to lose it.”

  I knew Gudrod risked Hrorik’s displeasure had it become known that he’d allowed a thrall to own a weapon. All slave owners fear their slaves rising up against them. I think Gudrod did so because he and I shared a love of shaping wood, of finding the object that lay hidden within. Gudrod had no sons to share his passion for the wood with. He warned me that if ever the bow was discovered, we would have to claim it was his, and he’d say he’d just allowed me to use it.

  My bow had remained a closely guarded secret, which at first only Gudrod and I were privy to. Whenever time permitted, he would take me out into the forest, beyond the reach of spying eyes, and teach me to shoot it. Under Gudrod’s tutelage I learned quickly, and we discovered I had a natural eye for aiming, and an affinity for the bow that allowed me before long to become a better shot than my teacher.

  I quickly progressed to shooting at small game—fowl, squirrels, rabbits, and the like—and practicing on such small and often moving targets sped my progress with the bow even more. Before long, it was a rare occasion when our trips into the forest did not produce some amount of meat, which Gudrod contributed to the estate’s larder. Sharp-eyed Ubbe was the first to discover our secret. Gudrod, it seemed, had never been that eager or successful a hunter before. Ubbe was troubled at first when he learned it was actually I who was shooting Gudrod’s fine new bow. He allowed us to continue, though, and eventually began allowing me to go into the forest alone and hunt.

  Oddly enough, I had Gunhild to thank for that. She enjoyed varying her diet with fresh game, and as Hrorik mostly chose to ignore her nagging, she’d turned her tongue on Ubbe, Hrorik’s foreman, and burdened him with her complaints about the lack of industry and hunting prowess of the men on the estate. When Ubbe realized that I always returned from the forest with some game in hand, he decided the simplest way to silence Gunhild was to relieve me from my other chores and dispatch me into the woods whenever she sought him out.

  I, of course, loved it. Being alone in the forest was the only freedom I knew. Eventually Sigrid, her maid, Astrid, and even Gunhild—the three women in charge of preparing the meals for Hrorik’s table—learned the true source of the game procured for the larder, but their desire to keep the influx of fresh and varied meat in their diets had enrolled them in the conspiracy of silence.

  When I returned to the hall of the longhouse, I handed my bow proudly to Harald for his inspection. Its pull was stronger than most men’s bows, but I could draw it easily, for I practiced at every chance. The only thing I’d loved more than my bow was my mother. Even on days when Ubbe did not send me into the forest to hunt, I would sneak off to the carpentry shed in the evening, after my chores were done, take my bow from its hiding place, string it, and practice my draw, standing inside the darkened shed and aiming imaginary arrows at targets that crossed my view through the open door.

  I waited excitedly while Harald studied the bow, running his hands along the long limbs and feeling their smoothness and strength, touching the horn tips to feel their sharpness, and rubbing his thumb across the hammered bronze bands that decorated them. I was proud of my bow, and expected Harald to be pleased with it, and proud of me for making it. But when he looked up across the table at me his expression was strange.

  “This is a very, very fine bow, Halfdan,” he said. “Very fine indeed. There is an important lesson for you to learn from this bow. Someday you will own lands and own the thralls that work them. If you do not watch them constantly, they will steal from you every chance they can.”

  I felt the blood drain from my face, and my stomach turned as though I had been struck. From the first day he’d become my brother, I’d felt gratitude toward Harald for his willingness to undertake the task of training me. Gradually I also came to feel trust, then friendship, and finally love. But now a cold anger swept over me and as it did, it was as though Harald changed before my eyes. No longer did I see my best friend and loving brother sitting across from me. I saw him again as though through the eyes of a thrall viewing a master. He was one of them—different from me, and he always would be.

  “No, Harald,” I said in a quiet voice. “That is not the lesson here. The lesson is that if you see your thralls as little more than cattle, and treat them as such, that is the only value you will ever get from them. But thralls are men, not beasts. Each is different. Like any other men, some have special talents and gifts. You and others like you who own other men can only know your thralls’ full worth if you possess the wisdom and kindness to treat them like men, and encourage them to find and use their talents. All your life you’ve been too blind to see this. You live your life of ease only because it has been built upon the thankless toil of thralls, but you do not even have the grace to think of them as men.

  “I did not steal from this household when I made this bow. Before I put my hands to it, this was only a worthless piece of wood. You certainly do not possess the skill to have brought a bow to life from it. In your hands, it would have had no more value than a piece of firewood. What did I steal from you, Harald? A scrap of firewood? And tell me, when you dined on wild goose or duck or hare, where did you think they came from? I hunted them with this piece of firewood, often in the early, cold hours before dawn, while you were still warm in your bed, sleeping off the night’s drinking, or satisfying your lust with a kitchen thrall.”

  I had no more appetite for food. I stood up and carried my bowl to where one of the hounds lay, and let him eat the remains of my dinner.

  The room was silent. No one else moved. No one spoke to Harald that way. No one. He was a jolly and good-humored man, except when he felt his honor had been impugned. Then, though, his anger was a thing to be feared, for it could be deadly. The kitchen thralls stared at me in shock, and Sigrid sat still as a stone, her eyes wide with alarm.

  Finally Harald spoke. “Halfdan,” he called in a stern voice. “Come here.”

  His face was twisted in a deep scowl. I began to regret my words. I hoped my angry outburst had not cost me the love of my brother. Even more, I hoped they would not cost me my home—or even my life. I walked slowly over and stood before him, where he still sat at table.

  His face was beginning to turn red. I feared it was a very bad sign. Then his shoulders began shaking—and a moment later he burst into laughter. Tears ran from his eyes down his cheeks.

  “I could hold it no longer,” he gasped. I realized then his anger had been feigned. He had been trying to frighten me, as a jest. He had succeeded.

  When Harald was finally able to cease laughing
and compose himself, he continued. “You are right. My words were unjust. I am greatly sorry. Today you are the teacher, not I.” He began laughing again. “But the look on your face, after you spoke, and realized what you had done….”

  This time all of us, Sigrid, I, the kitchen thralls, and even Gunhild, joined in his laughter. And afterward, even the lingering traces of the anger Harald had been carrying since Arnulf’s visit were gone.

  Harald picked up my bow and looked at it again. “I suppose,” he said, “that this also means I do not need to teach you to shoot a bow before we can go hunting. Good. Tomorrow we shall try to find a deer for Sigrid.”

  I woke Harald long before dawn the following morning.

  “Surely,” he said as I shook him awake, “the deer are all still asleep at this hour. We should follow their good example.”

  Harald had never been a serious hunter. On the occasions when he did hunt, he favored using hounds or thralls to drive the deer, or wild pigs, or other game to him. Today I did indeed intend to be the teacher, though, and show him the skills of a true woodsman. When I’d been sent into the forest to gather food for the table as a thrall, I’d had no hounds to sniff out the game, nor thralls to beat the underbrush and drive it to me. I’d had to rely on my eyes, and ears, and wits. I’d learned to use them well.

  I collected bread and cheese and a small skin of water, and was waiting outside the longhouse with my bow and quiver when Harald finally emerged.

  “Where are the others? Where are the dogs?” he asked.

  “There are no others,” I told him. “Only you and I are hunting.”

  “But how will we find the deer?”

  “I will find one for us,” I said and set off. Harald ate the food I’d brought as we walked.