Dagr looked at them in turn and made, as one making the sacrifice must, the final choice. He snatched the bird by the feet, and carried it, red wings flapping, past the sheep meadow and down the forest track to the beach. There he wrung its neck. He laid the rooster on a rock and pierced its breast with his knife, then pricked his left thumb with his knife tip. He pressed the bead of blood that had welled on his thumb into the wound on the bird’s chest. He raised his eyes to the rippling water before him. The Sun was going down, paling the sea to a soft grey.
“Njord! I, Dagr, son of Gunne, come to make Offering to you. You did not swallow me. I give you this bird, and I give you myself. Ever will I follow you, knowing that of all Gods, Njord has favoured me. Accept this Offering, and my thanks.”
He walked to the edge of the water, and hurled the rooster out upon its silvered surface.
“And keep Thorkel and his folk also in your favour,” he did not fail to add, remembering his host. The feathered body began to drift atop the water. Dagr watched it, remembering the feathers that had saved his life.
By the next morning he was feeling almost himself, and bethought him how he might begin to repay his host for all he had done. Thorkel did not think it likely that Dagr would be able to find a ship to take him back to Gotland until Spring; the trading season on Öland was over, and now that word had spread about the Rus pirates it would be hard to hire a man to take him, regardless of how much silver he was promised. And Dagr could promise none. He owned little but his boat, and now not even that.
“My brother will think me dead,” Dagr reflected aloud at table that night. With so many goats, the women made fine soft cheeses from the abundant milk, and he was savouring this, spread upon a freshly baked loaf. It recalled his sister-in-law, and the good butter and cheeses she drew from her cows.
“Já,” agreed Thorkel, spooning up his browis of shredded goat-meat and barley, “and you almost were. But as you live and eat, Spring will come, and with it traders who can carry you back to Gotland.”
A serving woman who was bringing a platter of oat-cakes to the table placed it just before him, and gave a sly smile. The amount this youthful stranger could eat was remarked on by all in the kitchen yard, but when you had nearly lost your life there was no limit to what one could enjoy; and besides, he was yet young and not come to his full size, as one of the older women pointed out.
He went to his alcove that night troubled about many things, how to get back being the chiefest. He lay awake a long while, hearing the soft snoring of others, the low whistling of the wind as it blew in through the smoke holes at the gable ends, and from outside, the occasional bark of one of the hounds. He sighed and turned. His box bed was laid with a thick layer of straw, which had sheep-skins upon it, and the blanket too was of squared sheepskins laced together, warm and soft. He had already seen that each day the women of the hall carried the skins outside and gave them a good shake to restore their loft. But as he settled in once more, hoping that sleep would come, the image of his featherbed came to him, and he seemed to see himself upon it, clinging to life, and recalled Thorkel's words about being swept into the open sea on the way to Frankland.
He slept, but in the dark of night awakened with a start. His alcove curtain was being drawn back, and he felt a small hand – a woman's – upon his shoulder. She slid in next him, and he felt her sit up, and the action of her pulling her gown off from over her head. He gave a quick intake of breath, but was too startled to speak. Her hand reached out and found his face, and caressed his cheek. She made a low murmuring sound, almost like a dove.
He could see next to nothing, and feared for a moment it was a mistake; she must have meant another man's bed; but as soon as she turned to him Dagr could do naught but accept the warm pressure of her body against his. He could barely breathe in his excitement. He let his hands lift and slide over her form. He traced the curve of her shoulder, the softness of her skin, the small yet rounded breasts, which felt beneath his fingertips like the choicest fruit. She shifted her narrow hips and moved onto her back, and pulled him atop her.
When he awoke she was still there. It was not yet dawn. She lay on her belly next him, and he let his fingers find her brow and stroke back the hair which covered it. She rose a little, and put her hand on his chest.
“Who are you?” he whispered.
“Ladja is my name,” she whispered back. “One of the women of the household.” Both the name and the way she spoke told him Norse was not her first tongue.
“Why....?” he began, not knowing how to ask why he had been so favoured.
“I am of the Rus. I want you to know that we can give, as well as take.”
“Of the Rus?” he repeated.
“Já. The old man stole me from my home on the banks of the river Svir, by Lake Ladoga, six Summers past.”
“Are you a slave?” he asked next.
“Já, and nai. More than a slave, less than a free-woman. The old man meant me for his son, thinking I would make a good second wife for him. But when we got here his first wife would have none of it.”
“But you must stay?”
“What else can I do? And I have a child, as well, a boy.” She was pulling on her gown. “I must go now.” She leant forward and kissed his face, then slipped out of the alcove into the dimness of the still hall.
When the household gathered to break its fast Dagr looked about him. There were several women who could, by their forms, be that named Ladja. Then he saw the woman who had placed the platter of oat cakes before him last night. This morning she held a tray of eggs which had been seethed in butter. She had brown hair, and as she neared him again, he saw that her eyes were a warm but light brown. She looked at him, but this time did not smile.
He saw her again, later in the day, in the grassy side yard near the barn. She was carrying out an armful of sheepskins, and shook each one with a snapping motion of her wrists. Tiny curls of wool fluff, freed to the air, showed in the sharp sunlight as she did. She looked up and saw Dagr watching her. It was then she smiled, and Dagr wondered if these were the very sheepskins from his own alcove on which she had given her warm softness to him.
She came again that night. He had lain awake, waiting, and had at last dozed off. Then came her hand, reaching for him, and the gentle pressure of her slight weight settling in near him. He once again felt her motion as she drew off her gown.
“Ladja,” he whispered, putting out his hand. It touched her face, and he felt her nod.
She lay down. “Was last night your first time with a woman?” she wanted to know.
He nodded his head in the dark, too abashed to speak.
“I thought so,” she said, but with no unkindness. “Tonight we will take our time.” Her soft voice took on a playful note. “You are not a bull in a field, jumping on and off the back of a cow, for fear of being gored.”
It was in this way Dagr learnt the art of love. Ladja did not come into his alcove every night, and he never knew beforehand when she would, which made their times together that much sweeter. She had made it clear he should not speak to her during the day, no more so than he might speak to any of the serving women, and as hard as this was he adhered to this request. He saw her going about her daily chores, and saw too the boy which must be her own, for though all the women cared together for the children of the farm, this one sought her out. Like her he was brown-haired, but his eyes were blue.
“Is Thorkel the father of your son?” he asked her one night, after they had given themselves. He hoped it would not pain her to answer, but he wished to know. She snorted.
“That old goat. Nai. Not him. And I never let his coward of a son near me. I would have screamed for his wife if he had so much as looked at me.” She paused a moment. “I am not certain who is. After I found out I was not to be the son's wife, it was hard for me. I had no standing, could be sold away...Some of the serving men raise crops on their own, on strips of land the old goat has granted
them, and which they have cleared. I thought perhaps...” she did not finish, only shook her head.
“Why must I not speak to you in the daylight?” he asked now.
“Because Thorkel likes you,” she almost hissed. “He would give me to you if you asked. And this I do not want.” She moved as if impatient with him, and was in fact searching for her gown. But before she left she gave him a kiss, nonetheless.
Dagr became one of the household. The dogs learnt to accept him, coming up in packs of three or four and sniffing his outstretched hands, and then beating their thick tails against his legs in consent as they milled about him. He always had a smile for the little girl who had found him and brought him help; she was one of Thorkel’s daughters. He played dice and got good at it, taking small sums of silver off of Thorkel’s bewildered eldest son, and the old man himself. And now that his strength was fully returned, he set about making himself useful. He worked alongside Thorkel's sons and field men as they cut and threshed, and joined with them in building a new Winter shelter for the sheep, stacking up and fastening the horizontal planks to form the pitched walls, and twisting and securing the stiff handfuls of dried sedge which made up its shaggy roof. In short, he worked as hard, or harder, as any of the men, be they sons or slaves, and this was not lost on old Thorkel, who insisted Dagr sit with the near members of his own family each night at table.
Thorkel had an anvil of flat stone, with an iron hammer and tongs, and Dagr made good use of them. He forged a variety of punches and augers, and even a well-balanced cauldron frame, and made a credible job of it. But the Fall days quickly dwindled into darkness, with Winter coming on; and Dagr felt the distance between himself and Gotland all the sharper. Still, he reminded himself that every day that passed was one day closer to Spring and the hope of returning home.
Then he would think of his lost boat, and of Halle, perhaps dead or even further away than he, and his sadness would return. Sometimes he would walk through the trees to the beach on which he landed, and stand gazing over the water at a land he could not see.
“When I am home,” he told Ladja one night, as they nestled in his alcove, “I shall never seek another land. I will get a new boat, and fish; but always within sight of Gotland.”
She nodded, resting in the crook of his arm.
He spoke to her with sudden earnestness. “Ladja,” he told her. “When I go, come with me.”
He felt her response before she spoke, for she stiffened in his arm.
“Do not grow to care for me that way,” she warned, but there was naught but tenderness in her voice. “There is a man at home I think of every day. He will be wed by now, but when I return he will send away his wife, whoever she is, and wed me.”
He had half expected her rebuff, but it hurt him still. He was silent, and after a moment she went on.
“When they took me from my home I wore golden ear-rings, and finger-rings also of gold,” she said, and Dagr had before noticed the tiny holes in her small ear lobes. “They hang now from Thorkel’s wife’s brooches. Before I go I will take them with me, and step ashore the banks of the Svir again wearing Rus gold.”
“But...how will you reach there?” he finally asked.
“In Spring you will go with Thorkel and many of his people to the trading post at the southern tip of Öland. One day when I am there to help carry back his goods I will find a trader, heading to the land of the Rus. I will be his woman aboard ship in return for his ferrying me there.”
He took a long breath. “And your son?”
“He is half Svear,” she answered. “If he wishes to come with me, he will, but it is his to decide. I was taken from my home-land, and will not do the same to my son.”
“You are so…sensible,” Dagr said.
“We women have need to be sensible. If we were not we could never survive all the foolishness you men put us through.”
The days of Fall dwindled, and hard Winter arrived. Dagr felt the days were shorter and the nights colder than on Gotland. Thorkel laughed at a young man’s fancy, but admitted that home-sickness could drain the savour even from the feasting of Blót, that chill month of sacrifice and slaughter, and the revelry of the Winter’s Nights festivals, when one could take heart that the Wheel of the Year had turned and the Sun would begin its steady ascent in the heavens.
Farm work in Winter is mainly the tending of beasts and the fixing and making of tools, and while Thorkel’s sons and serving men fashioned new wooden handles for shovels and picks, Dagr busied himself at the forge fire-ring he had made. He made iron strappings to hold together the staves of newly-made wood buckets, and drew forth nails and spikes. The short days passed.
When the snows were deep the younger folk pushed themselves about on wooden skis, poling their way over drifts. A few times Dagr went thus down to the shore of the Baltic. The forest which had been closed with leafy shrubs and tangled undergrowth now lay open to his kick and thrust. There at the edge of the beach he would look over the slush of frozen sea water. The sky itself seemed frozen, a pale swirl of milky blue and silver grey, melded to the chunks of thrusting ice which floated slowly with the current. He would gaze towards home until the blasts of icy air drove him back to Thorkel’s warm hall.
And there was Ladja. He did not ask her again to come with him back to Gotland; now that the year had turned he felt that if the Gods smiled he would find a ship to take him before Mid-Summer, and as restless as he felt, he need be content with that hope. And she was, he knew, treading her own path. Her resolve was such that he did not doubt that one day she would in fact step ashore on the banks of the Svir. She had told him their first night that she had come to him to show that the Rus could give as well as take. Dagr must content himself with that.
After the Spring thaw the fields dried out under the ever-higher Sun. The air was still chill, but the meadows sprung a riot of fresh green grasses beginning to be dotted with yellow, blue, and white wild flowers. Lambs and kids were born, in abundance, and Thorkel’s son’s wife brought forth a new daughter. Shearing days began, and thick raw wool was pushed into cauldrons of boiling water until globs of wool-wax rose to the surface.
Dagr, missing any form of fishing, had a mind to make a weir in one of the deeper pools of a stream in the woods. He might come up with eels, or even bream. He recalled seeing a few sea-berry shrubs growing near a beach a cove away from the one he had washed up on, and set out to find a few and dig out their roots, good for weaving into fish weir nets. He went with an axe and a pike, made his way through the burgeoning woods, and thence to the narrow beach in which grew the shrubs. He pushed his way through the undergrowth and onto the pebbled sand. He straightened up, and stared. There, hauled up on the beach, were two fishing boats. One of them was his.
His surprise was so great he dropped the pike he was holding. It had been many months since he had seen her, and he felt as a man would if a prized horse had run way, and then trotted back home. When he could tear his eye from her he scanned the beach. There was no sign of folk, and from his vantage point he could not be sure if foot-tracks lay in the sand. He had his knife at his belt, but decided the axe to be the better weapon, and walked as quietly as he could to the boat. If any Rus be sleeping within he wanted to be ready to meet him.
His boat was not the nearest to him, and he cautiously approached the first and peered over the side. It was empty. He walked the few strides to his own, crossing in front of the bow so he could look in the side she listed to. Again empty.
His hand went to her straked side, and he lowered the axe. His tool chest was gone, but the mast was there, lying against the keel, with the linen sail furled next to it. The steering oar looked as it always had. There was a new, and larger anchor stone, with a quantity of hempen line attached. He climbed over the rail. He picked up the sail and unrolled it, letting it pool at his feet. It was sound, and he re-furled it. Coils of line lay near the end of the mast. He stood there a moment longer, and then he saw th
e head of a nail, sticking up slightly from the deck. It was the last thing he had been looking at before he had leapt over the side to his seeming death.
He jumped down to the sand. It was hard-packed and gave little proof of his having been there, but he crouched down and backed away, brushing it gently with one hand until he reached the tree line. Then he ran for the farm.
Thorkel was sitting on a stool in the kitchen yard having his hair cut by one of his daughters when Dagr ran up to him, panting, to tell of his find. The old man sputtered in his amaze, and the daughter brought Dagr a dipperful of water to slow his words and give them both time to absorb this news.
“I will take her, now, if you allow a man or two to help me push her into the water,” Dagr was saying. “She is up high on the beach, but I will only need them for this, nothing more.”
There was still a month until the trading post in the South would open; this was not what Thorkel had planned. His head was thrumming. No one should have landed in that cove, and yet there was not one but two strange boats, one of them stolen. And the thought that pirates might be near was none too comforting. Yet as Dagr talked, the old man regained some of his wits, and began nodding as he thought aloud. “Já, it is only right and just for a man to recover his own property,” he agreed, “and even if I am questioned I can truly say I saw no one steal a boat.”
A small throng of folk had gathered around them at this point, and Thorkel began gesticulating and giving orders, though the two cooks, who had doted on Dagr’s zeal for their efforts, had already begun filling a food bag for his journey. Several of Thorkel’s younger sons were eager to be those who would help push the boat into the sea, but Dagr, looking over them, insisted the two strongest of the farm hands be allowed to serve, and that his safety in getting away cleanly was dependent on the quickest and fastest exit, with the fewest spectators.
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