by Mark Coakley
3: A FULL BLADDER
Halfdan the Black stepped out of King Lambi's hall. It was night. He had to piss. On the flat-stone path in front of him, a few guard-dogs were lying together. One dog was now sniffing at the early-fall wind. The dogs knew Halfdan's smell and ignored him. Halfdan turned and walked towards a row of out-houses on the east side of the big building. The hall was a hulking rectangle of oak boards nailed to thick oak beams holding up a high roof. The hall was the biggest building in the town of Eid, which was the biggest town in the kingdom of Fjordane. It stood aloof from Eid's other buildings. Its sloping roof was covered with tall clumps of grass and dying, droopy summer-flowers. It was surrounded by rich soil farmed by King Lambi.
Halfdan was now twenty-seven years old, and had lived in the hall as one of the King's fighters for eleven years. His face and body were covered with scars. His black hair hung in tangled curls from the top of his head; it was cut short, almost to the skin, on the back and sides of his head. In his hair and thick beard, there were a few thin strands of grey. He had one chipped front tooth. As was then customary in Norway on festive or formal occasions, for both men and women, Halfdan had smeared blue paint around both of his eyes.
A "T"-shaped Tor-idol of clay hung from a string around his muscle-thick neck. He wore a long-sleeved grey linen shirt that hung almost to his knees, tied at his waist by a belt of reindeer-leather. The belt-buckle was made of silver, twisted into the shape of a bug-eyed, cat-like beast with hands that gripped itself. A sword dangled from the belt, its oiled iron blade hiding in a sheath of cloth-wrapped oak-wood.
The well-used weapon swung forward and back beside the wool cloth of his right pant-leg as he walked.
A bit drunk, from a long night of feasting and boozing, Halfdan looked up at the brooding snow-topped mountain-range overhead, and at the clear sky filled with sharp silver stars and a honey-yellow moon. Halfdan stopped walking, staring up. He lifted a hand as if to reach up and pull down some of the glittering stars.
"Beautiful," he whispered.
Halfdan walked past a row of carved and painted masks of the gods hanging on the outside hall-wall, the grimacing faces of Odin, Tor, Freyir, Baldur, Loki and others; some of whose names are now forgotten. Halfdan went to the corner of the hall and turned left again and went fast towards a row of woven-wicker huts down-wind of the hall. To his right and across a grassy space was the high wooden wall that surrounded Eid. On the other side of the town-wall was a ragged line of shadowy trees that stretched up the dark mountain-face.
Halfdan went in an out-house. A smell of beery piss and puke rose from the hole in the ground by his cow-leather shoes. He yawned and aimed himself and soon felt better.
As he was walking back towards the hall's front door, Halfdan again noticed the guard-dogs on the path of flat stones that led towards the rest of the town.
The dogs were now eating something. Halfdan was surprised. Before his piss, the dogs had been resting on the ground and one had been sniffing the night-wind.
Where had the food come from?
Halfdan, suspicious, stopped walking.
He was staring at the dogs and about to go over to them to see what they were eating when something hit him in the lower part of his belly. It hit him hard and punched his breath out.
Halfdan gasped and looked down. A wood arrow-shaft with grey guide-feathers was now sticking straight out of his belly.
He gasped, "Tor!"
His legs went weak and he fell backwards. He landed on his back on the cold lumpy ground. Arrow-shot in the gut. He knew he was dying. A bad way to end. It would be painful and slow.