I wondered what could have caused the mighty God Thor such anger, that he would summon the fury of the storm and hurl a thunderbolt to destroy this tree. Had the Gods quarreled among themselves, and Thor had vented his anger on the forest? It must have happened last summer, when foliage was full on the tree, for numerous dead leaves still clung to its branches. Along the top side of the fallen trunk, the branches were still whole, but on the sides and underneath they’d been broken and crushed by the fall, forming a dense tangle around the fallen trunk.
I slept that night with my back against the giant stump, wrapped tightly in my cloak. I was concealed from spying eyes by the low brush on the hilltop, but had a good view of the approach along the stream—the direction from which my pursuers would come.
When I awoke the following morning, I knew what I must do. The plan must have been whispered in my ear by some benevolent spirit while I slept, for it was fully formed in my mind when sleep left me.
I stood and studied the ground and woods around me. The peak of the hill was high enough that I could look out across the roof of the forest. I noticed in the distance what appeared to be a break in the woods, running in a line as far as I could see. That way must lie another river or perhaps a road. For now, my problem, and hopefully its solution, lay closer at hand.
If they hadn’t already, eventually my hunters would find where I’d crossed the river. After the two false crossings I’d created, they’d doubtless have learned to search the bank upstream on the same side to see if my trail resumed there. Finding nothing on that side, they would cross the river and search anew.
By staying in the streambed on this side of the river, I’d bought myself time. Einar was a woodsman, though, and a skilled and tenacious tracker. I’d not been able to lose him yet, and didn’t expect to. I was certain that when they found no trail on this side of the river, either, he’d realize I’d used the stream to mask my scent and passage, and they would turn their hunt up along its banks. There was no other route I could have followed.
When the hunters searched far enough along the sides of the stream, their hound would come upon the point where I’d left the water and climbed to this hilltop, and he would follow my scent trail here. That could not be undone. What I must do now was build upon it.
Laying new trail for the hound to follow, I moved down the hill’s side, along the trunk of the fallen ash. I stayed on the side closest to the stream until I came to the point where the great tree’s branches were thickest. Though many had been broken in the fall, their shattered stumps and stubs still jutted from the trunk, holding it a few hand-spans above the ground.
I dropped to my stomach on the ground. Pushing with my legs and pulling with my arms and elbows, I wormed my way through the tangle of broken branches and pulled myself under the trunk. When I crawled from beneath the great tree’s body on the far side, I used the hand-axe I’d taken from Kar and cleared a small space close to the trunk. Kneeling low to the ground, I found that from there I couldn’t see through the tangle of branches to the open ground beyond. If I could not see out, the hunters would not be able to see in.
Just above the point where I’d crawled from beneath the trunk, an unbroken limb, as large around as my leg, jutted straight out from the trunk. Its outer end was buried in a crisscrossed thicket of branches, broken and tangled in the crushing fall.
I cut the thick branch through with the axe, just beyond where it joined the trunk. It fell heavily, squarely onto the space where my scent-trail emerged from under the tree. It would be the hammer, and the ground below would be the anvil. I cut two sections from a smaller branch, each almost as long as my arm. They would form the supports for my deadfall.
Straining, I lifted the thick limb up and propped it with the two supports over the low opening where I’d crawled from beneath the trunk. Using the spare bowstring I’d taken from the man I’d killed, I wound it around the two supports, up high, near where the thick limb balanced on them, then fashioned the remainder of the cord into a noose. I draped the noose so it hung over the gap under the tree trunk, and concealed the cord with leaves and small twigs. Any creature—man or dog—following my trail would have to pass their head through the noose as they pulled themselves from under the tree.
With the other spare bowstring I’d taken from Kar, I lashed three arrows to the deadfall log, their shafts and sharpened iron heads pointing down and extending a hand-span below it. I could not risk my trap only injuring its victim.
When I finished, I turned and crawled and wormed my way through the broken, tangled branches until I was clear of the tree.
I hadn’t planned to remain and see the results of my handiwork. I’d planned to let my trap reduce the numbers of those who hunted me, while I moved on. But the hound and the three hunters following it had been moving silently while they’d ranged along the streambed searching for my trail. I’d barely cleared the tree’s branches when the silence was shattered by the hound’s baying, just a short distance away, at the point where I’d left the stream the night before. The baying continued as the hound moved rapidly toward the hill. Behind it I could hear the excited shouts of the hunters and the thudding of their horses’ hooves.
I had to find a place to hide, and quickly. I spotted a cedar a short distance away, its lowest branches hanging down almost to the ground, like the skirts of a woman. An image flashed through my mind: Once as a young child, when frightened by Toke’s anger and threats, I’d hidden under my mother’s skirts. I ran now and dove underneath the sheltering branch-skirts of the cedar and pulled my cloak over my head. I hoped that huddled under the cloak’s gray covering in the shadows under the tree, I could pass for a large stone. If the dog survived, of course, my ruse would not fool its sharp nose.
There was a narrow gap where I held the folds of my cloak pinched together in front of my face. I peered through it, and tried to still my breathing.
A moment later, three men on horseback appeared on the hilltop. One of them, a crewman of Toke’s, shouted orders. “Tord, go down that side of the tree. I’ll go down this. Perhaps he’s gone to ground in its branches. Einar, you watch from up here and warn us if you see anything.”
The man who’d spoken spurred his horse down the hill on the side I was on. The hound they followed was already burrowing into the tangle of branches around the tree. Suddenly it gave one loud yelp, then was silent.
The man who hunted on my side wore a helm and a heavy leather jerkin studded with small metal plates. A sword hung at his side, a shield was slung across his back, and he had an arrow nocked and at the ready across his bow.
“Tord, Einar,” he called nervously. “Do you see anything?”
“I see nothing,” Einar called out from the hilltop.
“Did you not hear the dog cry out?” the man called Tord answered, shouting unseen from the far side of the trunk. “He must be in there if he killed the dog. Beware the range of his bow. We should set fire to the tree.”
Toke’s man on my side of the tree was now but thirty paces from me. Had he been Einar, he would have seen the earth was disturbed where I’d scrambled under the branches and gone to ground.
I recognized the leather jerkin he was wearing. It was the jerkin that had belonged to Rolf. An image of Rolf, trailing his fishing line behind the boat on our voyage north, flashed in my mind. I wondered if there were fish to catch in the afterworld. I eased my bow around in front of me and slid an arrow from my quiver.
“Einar,” Tord cried. “You’re supposed to be the great hunter. What do you think? Is he hiding within the branches of this tree?”
“I think,” Einar called, “that I see two men who have gone from being hunters to being prey.”
“Shut up, old fool,” the man near me shouted angrily.
I let my cloak slide from my shoulders and, still on my knees beneath the cedar’s overhanging branches, brought my bow to full draw. Toke’s man was staring toward the tangle of branches around the fallen ash, but he must have s
een my movement from the corner of his eye. He wheeled his horse, turning toward me. I saw, down the front of Rolf’s jerkin, a dark stain where his life had bled out from the wound in his throat. Toke’s man started to raise his bow, but before he could bring it to bear, I shot.
It was a short distance and an easy target. When I first drew back my arrow, I intended to place it in the center of the man’s chest, a killing shot. Seeing Rolf’s blood changed my mind. Just before I released, I lowered my aim and let my arrow rip through his belly. He dropped his bow and screamed with pain, clutching at the feathered shaft that had suddenly sprouted from his body.
“That was for you, Rolf,” I whispered, “and for all the fish you’ll never catch.”
The man’s horse bolted, but somehow he stayed on it, hunched over and still screaming, as it dashed off through the forest.
Tord, on the far side of the great oak, called out, “Alf, Alf! What happened?”
I fitted another arrow to my bow, expecting Einar and Tord to circle and attack. To my surprise, Einar sat motionless on his horse atop the hill. I noticed that his bow was still slung across his back. He called to Tord. “It was an ambush,” he said. “The bandit. He has fled now into the forest. Alf was wounded. His horse carried him that way.” He pointed in the direction the horse had run. “Quickly, you must catch him. He is badly hurt.”
I heard the hoofbeats of Tord’s horse fading as he pursued the man I’d shot. Einar still sat motionless on his horse, watching me. I replaced my arrow in my quiver and trotted into the woods.
11 : Einar
I knew the man I’d shot was gravely wounded, and would probably die, but a wound through the belly would not kill him quickly. His death would be lingering and painful. I was glad of it. I wanted Toke and his men to suffer for their crimes.
Unless his fellows sped his passage, the wounded man’s dying would delay them. I could have used the time to gain distance from my pursuers. I didn’t. Einar’s actions at the ambush had aroused my curiosity. His failure to attack me could have been due to cowardice, but I did not believe so. From what I’d seen of him, he seemed a dependable, competent man, and I knew Hrodgar had respected him enough to entrust the hunt for Harald’s killer to him. It was unlikely that such a man was a coward.
Though the party that hunted me still outnumbered me two to one, I suspected only one of those men was now my enemy. If that was true, there was no need to continue my flight. It was time to end this hunt and kill Toke’s other man.
As the sun began to drop toward the horizon in the late afternoon, filling the forest with long shadows, I crept back through the woods to the scene of my ambush.
Watching from a distance, I could see that all three horses were tethered at the top of the hill. Einar was down by the hill’s base, cutting limbs from the fallen tree with an axe. After a time I saw Toke’s man, the one called Tord, on the top of the hill. He was crouched beside the tall stump of the great ash. Periodically he would raise his head up above the brush that covered the hilltop and scan the hillside and woods below, searching for me. He searched in vain. I was the hunter now, stalking my prey. I moved through the forest as invisible and silent as a wolf.
All afternoon I watched Einar cut branches and drag them to the top of the hill. Once night fell, they kept a large fire blazing. The sight of it made me smile. The fire’s bright light might comfort Tord, and bolster his courage, but it would illuminate him for my bow, too.
When the hour was long past midnight, the time when the darkness seems blackest and sleep tugs at a man’s eyelids, I began creeping up the hill toward the fire, slithering along the ground on my belly like some great serpent. I’d left my cloak, the leather bag of food, and my quiver hidden beside a tree at the base of the hill. I carried my bow and four arrows in one hand, and my dagger and small-axe were at my belt. It was time to finish it.
Tord had positioned himself with his back against the stump. He’d built a brush barricade close around himself with some of the branches Einar had dragged to the hilltop, and had arranged the saddles and gear from the three horses, plus his own shield and that of the wounded man, across the front of the low, brush wall to provide additional protection. Only his head, protected by a steel helm, showed occasionally above the wall of his little fortress when he’d raise up and look around. It would be enough. Once I got close enough, I would pin that head to the stump with one of my arrows.
The man I’d shot lay in front of Tord’s barricade, covered by a cloak, near the fire. Mostly he moaned quietly, but at intervals he let out piercing shrieks. Einar was sitting on his shield at the opposite side of the fire from Tord’s fortress.
As I neared the hilltop, the wounded man screamed again.
“I wish he would shut up,” Tord snapped. “Why can’t he go ahead and die? Why don’t you end his misery for him?”
“He’s your comrade,” Einar replied. “He is your responsibility. You kill him, if that’s what you want.”
Tord raised his bow. “Kill him now. Kill him now…or I’ll shoot you.”
Einar gave a harsh chuckle, and spit on the ground. “Without me, alone in this forest,” he said, “how far do you think you’d get on your own?”
“The old army road cannot be far from here,” Tord retorted. “When I find it, I can head south. I’ll be safe then…” But he lowered his bow and said nothing more.
Einar was whittling at a piece of wood with his knife. After a time, he stood up and stuck the knife in its scabbard at his belt.
“I need to add wood to the fire,” he said. He walked to Tord’s barricade and pulled a branch from it, thick as a man’s wrist and as long as an arm. He started to turn back to the fire. Then, without warning, he swung the limb hard and fast into the side of Tord’s head. Tord’s helm clanged and flew off his head as he slumped sideways onto the ground.
Working quickly, Einar knelt and fumbled at one of the saddles, then stood up holding a coil of rope. He pulled and kicked the brush barricade aside, knelt beside Tord’s unconscious form, and tied one end of the rope to Tord’s right wrist.
Still carrying the loose end of the rope, Einar stood, walked around the stump, and grabbed Tord’s other wrist. He pulled hard on the wrist and the rope, dragging Tord up to a sitting position, his back against the stump, and wrenched his arms backwards so they stretched behind him. Einar looped the rope around Tord’s other wrist, then pulled it tight across the back side of the tree trunk and knotted it there.
Einar walked around the fire collecting all of the weapons, both his own and those of Toke’s men, and placed them in a heap on one side of the fire. Walking to the opposite side of the fire, across from the weapons, he turned toward the darkness, raised both hands to show they were empty, and called out, “Come out now, that we may speak. It is as you told Kar. There is no fight between you and me.”
I pondered his words and actions, searching for a trap or sign of deception. Finding none, I stood up and walked forward into the light. As I did, though, I slipped my small-axe from my belt carried it ready in my hand.
“Gods,” Einar said, when I rose from the ground. “I could feel your presence, like one feels wolves in the forest at night, circling beyond the reach of the fire’s light. But I did not know you were so close. I’ve been curious to see the one Kar described as a beardless lad.”
He stared long at my face, as though he could read it like he read tracks on the ground. I stared back, still looking for signs of trickery. It was Einar who broke the silence.
“Beardless you may be, but you’re no lad—regardless of your youth. Only a man, and a rare one at that, deals death the way you do. I’ve seen it in your actions, and I can see it now in your eyes, as well. You’re a rare killer, for certain.”
Later, when I recalled Einar’s words, they would trouble me. It had been only days since I’d first killed a man. In truth, I’d found it easy—far too easy. Killing another should be difficult, and should trouble your heart afterward. It had trou
bled me less than killing a deer or even a hare. Such beasts were innocent. The men I’d killed were not. But this man Einar, clearly a seasoned warrior, thought me unusual—a “rare killer.” What kind of creature was I? What had I become? Did I truly possess some kind of horrible talent—a gift for slaying? Surely I did not. Surely Einar was wrong.
That night, as I stepped into the firelight and faced Einar, no such thoughts burdened my mind.
“Why do you help me?” I asked him.
“You told Kar the line of Hrorik is not ended,” Einar replied. “My name is Einar, whom men call Sharp-Eye. My past is tied to the line of Hrorik. I owe a blood-debt to Hrorik’s line.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, puzzled.
“Many, many years ago, when Hrorik was a young man,” Einar said, “four shiploads of Gotars and Sveas sailed into the Limfjord. In the night, two ships landed at the farm of Offa, and two at the estate of another chieftain farther down the fjord. At the other estate, all of the men were killed, and the women and children stolen. At Offa’s farm, though, Harald, the older brother of Hrorik and the namesake of Hrorik’s son, walked the fields that night, unable to sleep. He saw the ships pulling into shore, oars muffled, and roused the household. With his father, brother, and their carls, he fought the raiders at the shore until the folk of the farm could flee into the safety of the forest.
“Because the numbers of the invaders were so great, once their families were safe, the fighting men of the household also retreated to the safety of the forest. All save Harald. Dodging the arrows of the invaders, he ran to the byre, took the swiftest horse, and rode to the village to warn the folk there.”
I interrupted him impatiently. “I did not ask for a tale. I wanted an answer.”
Einar was unperturbed by my words or my impatience. “Some answers cannot be found in a few words,” he replied. “They cannot be understood without a full telling. Do not let your haste rob you of knowledge.
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