That was one fewer to vex Eirik, Gunnhild thought when she heard. She could not tell how much she had had to do with it, but at least she had striven to help her man. Maybe next time she could find means not so thankless.
Somewhat later she got news that Egil and Thorolf were again off in viking toward the Baltic, with four ships. She could only hope they would come to grief. No spell of hers seemed to bite on the sons of Skallagrim Kveldulfsson. Someday, though, somehow, if the gods would not strike them down, she might wreak something herself.
Meanwhile there was enough else to do. Any lady of a big household must steer it day by day, keep track of everything that went in and out, hold the staff to their work, look to their needs, settle their squabbles, make sure that every guest was done by as befitted his rank and honor, be aware of all that happened which her husband might not know of and counsel him about it, take a lead in skilled womanly work such as weaving—it went on without end. If the lord was going away, he would leave a trusty man in charge; then the lady had better see to it that that man did what she felt was best. A queen was the lady of many households, and, above them, the whole kingdom.
Not that Harald Fairhair had ever put any real reins in the hands of a woman. But he had had scores. Whenever he wedded, it was mainly to forge ties with kinfolk. Eirik had only Gunnhild. The rest were fleeting sport, now and then, here and there. He took none openly and lastingly as a leman. Which was as well for them, Gunnhild thought. It was she with whom he truly lived. And, more and more, he told her what was on his mind and heard her redes.
This in turn, more and more, got other men to seek her help with this or that. What she did for them might anger still others, and the anger might fester into hatred. But so the world was; and from every happening, she learned.
Spring lost itself in summer, balefires blazed when the sun turned, the year waned toward fall, and again Gunnhild went heavy with child. Restless, Eirik had fared off to raid in Ireland. When he came home, he found her icily wrathful. She had lately gotten word from Denmark.
Much news flowed into a kingly house, not only from elsewhere in Norway. Ships plowed the seas throughout the North, most of them in trade, though few chapmen hung back from plundering when they could without risk. They went as far west as Iceland, as far east as Aldeigjuborg on Lake Ladoga, as far south as the lands of the Moors. Men also trekked by horse and river, bearing such goods as furs and amber into the Holy Roman Empire as well as the vastnesses of Gardariki. Some even reached golden Miklagard, where the Emperor of the Greeks had his seat, or Serkland beyond his realms. If afterward they called on a Norse king, and they often did, they brought their tales and tidings.
Thus, bit by bit over the months, Gunnhild had heard what befell Egil and Thorolf. They veered from their first aim and bore southwest for Jutland. After harrying there they went on to Friesland, where they stayed for the rest of the season. It was a land hitherto unknown to them, and seemingly they got a wish for knowledge of it. At length they headed back, belike meaning to put up at Thorir’s for another winter, heedless of Eirik. Egil’s ship was the fastest. Given a fair wind, she ran ahead of the others. When she reached the landmarks of the march between Friesland and Jutland, he stopped to wait for his brother.
Several men had been camped thereabouts on the lookout. Two of them came from the marshy woods to Egil. They were carls of Aaki, the Dane whom he had saved in Kurland, with a warning from him. Eyvind Özurarson had been able to keep track of the Icelanders. As the time when they would likely return drew near, he took a strong fleet around to the west coast. It lurked north of here, to catch them when they passed by. Eyvind made no secret—far from it—of his lust for revenge; and King Harald Bluetooth had a reckoning of his own with them.
However, said the men, they themselves had been watchful, and knew that Eyvind had gone off for a little while, being bored with sitting still. He lay not too far off with only two ships, mere karfis, to set against Egil’s dragon.
At once Egil bade his men take down the awnings and row very quietly. They did so through the night. By dawnlight they found the prey at anchor. Straightway they attacked, hurling stones, spears, and arrows. No few of Eyvind’s men fell. Those who were left fought when Egil’s closed with them, but had no hope. Eyvind cast off his ring-mail, jumped overboard, and swam ashore. Likewise did those among his crews who could. Egil brought the two ships back, together with all gear and weapons.
Thorolf had arrived. Aaki’s messengers witnessed what followed. When they got home, they told him and others. Aaki had broad holdings and no few men at his beck. As yet, the king held the outlying parts of Denmark too weakly to quell the likes of him. From his hall on Fyn the word went from mouth to mouth—little changed, if at all, for honest men listened carefully to news that mattered and got it well into memory—until it reached Gunnhild.
Egil told Thorolf how he won his booty, and added:
“Hard and good we hit him,
here alongside Jutland.
Well did Denmark’s warder
wage the fight against us.
At last, though, Eyvind Loudmouth
left in search of shelter,
wisely, through the water,
and with his men swam eastward.”
The mockery alone was a knife-thrust. “I think that after what you’ve done, we can hardly go on to Norway,” Thorolf said. Egil laughed and answered that there was no dearth of places. He had no wife to leave behind.
King Eirik’s mouth tightened when he heard. “Thorolf was right,” he said slowly. “Not even Thorir Hersir could stay my hand now. We’ll bide our time.”
Gunnhild thought about that wife and her small daughter. But no, to go after them would be unworthy, and useless. Indeed, it would mean an unhealable break with Thorir, Björn Brynjolfsson, and their kindred.
She felt her son kick in her womb.
He was born a little before Yule, when Eirik and she were with Harald Fairhair in Haddingjadalar. The high king had grown heavy, white of hair and beard; but he lumbered to the fiercely yelling bairn as a bear does to a beehive, himself poured the water, and bestowed his own name. A feeling rushed through Gunnhild that here the gift of mightiness passed straight from the old to the new.
XIV
Through the next two years and more, from time to time she heard about Egil.
From Denmark, the brothers sailed with their following south along Saxland and Flanders. Thereabouts they learned that King Aethelstan of England needed fighting men and great gain might be had in his service. They crossed the narrow sea through rough fall weather and rowed up the Thames to London, better than three hundred strong. When the king was told, he received them gladly. After talk about pay, honors, and other terms, they became his men. During that winter he got to be good friends with the Icelanders. Gunnhild could understand why. Thorolf was fair to behold, well-spoken, quick-witted, altogether winsome—were it not for his foul brother. Egil must be somewhat likable in his harsh way, when he chose, or he could not have gotten along with such folk as Thorir Hersir; and then there was his skaldcraft. Both bore tales of far lands and stirring deeds.
Aethelstan had set one condition. He would take no openly heathen men under his banner. Thorolf, Egil, and many others did not want baptism, but they agreed to be prime-signed. By this rite they showed Christ enough deference that Christians could freely deal with them, without forswearing their own gods.
So Egil still looked mainly to Odin, the lord of war, the father of wizardry, he who swung hanged on the world-tree Yggdrasil for nine nights to get the runes that meant power, but also he who had borne the mead of poetry forth into the world. Egil would, Gunnhild thought. When Thorolf named any god at all in her hearing, it had been Thor, red-bearded slayer of trolls, bringer of lightning, thunder, and the rain that quickens the earth.
She herself ought to feel somehow close to the one-eyed Wanderer. He raised the dead to foretell the morrow for him; he himself had gone beyond death and down in
to the deeps of hell. Yet always he was in and of the sky. When he swept through the world beneath, folk knew him oftenest as the leader of the Aasgard’s Ride, dead men on bone horses with coldly fiery hounds, galloping along the night wind in chase of a ghost quarry. When men fought, he chose who should win and who die.
Frey, Freyja, Njörd, the Vanir of soil and sea, offered more to women. But merely to worship them, though well enough in childbirth or when hoping for a good harvest, was likewise to give oneself over. Were we always helpless? In Finnmörk they believed that man, whether he or she, was at the very core of the world, which was a huge wholeness. Man, no less than gods, could steer it, was indeed needful for its life. And the spells had lifted her out of herself.
Nevertheless, the shamans could not hold off the Norse and Swedes, who laid burdensome scot on them when they did not rob them outright. Nor was that which Gunnhild learned from them anything overwhelming. It had its uses, but in the end, what ruled was raw strength.
No, Gunnhild thought, that was not quite true. Cunning showed where the sword ought to strike and how. This was something a woman could give her man and her sons.
As for Thorolf, maybe after dwelling awhile in England he would become Christian. Nearly all the Danes who swarmed there and took land, these past hundred years or so, had by now. Christendom was so vastly more wide and rich than anything left in the North. Egil, though, would always be too stubborn.
She herself wondered about it. She had met Christians, both outlanders and Norsemen who had taken baptism abroad, but they said little about their faith, at least to her. They did not drink to the gods, and went aside to do whatever they did for worship. Thralls captured overseas had even less to say, and nobody cared, unless maybe the children of the women among them. While priests had long been moving into Denmark, few, if any, had yet come farther north.
She had gathered that they believed there was only one god, who had gotten himself born as a man and walked on earth till he was killed and went back into Heaven. The death was not for knowledge or power like Odin’s, but a kind of wergild for some wrongdoing long ago. Those who served this Christ faithfully went to him after they died and lived forever in happiness. However, they remembered the earth. Often they came back and helped folk who offered to them—much like elves or other Beings. Or so she understood the story to go.
What caught at her was that otherwise the Christians when at home seemed to do their worship not anywhere and anyhow they liked. Everything was ordered from faraway Romaborg: through men on the spot, called bishops, who thus held sway like lendmen or even jarls. Maybe, with them at his side, a king could bring his own headmen to heel.
It was only a thought in her.
She wondered whether Thorolf and Egil had met Haakon Haraldsson, Aethelstan’s fosterling. Recalling her foresight, she shivered a bit.
Then fresh news came in.
The English king gathered warriors wherever and however he could, because the lands he had laid under him, Wales, Scotland, Danish Northumbria, were seething. Next summer the storm broke. Constantine, king of the Scots, came south, laying waste as he fared. Olaf, Norse king in Dublin, joined him with a host, as did the Welsh lords. The Northumbrians rose, men hastening to make war beside the strangers. Vikings from Norway and the Western Islands swarmed there too. Thousands together roared into Mercia, smashing all who tried to withstand them.
Aethelstan in Wessex rallied his troops and levies. As they moved north, he sent messengers ahead to his foes. He bade them meet him at a place he named, rather than ruining England. There they could fight, and whoever won would rule the kingdom. No man who cared about his name could well naysay that. And so the two hosts camped on the moor at Brunanburh.
For some days they sat while word went to and fro. Aethelstan offered the invaders a silver shilling for every plow in the land if they would go peacefully home. After talking it over, they said they wanted more. Aethelstan added money for each freeborn man of them. Constantine answered that he would take this, and also Northumbria. Then Aethelstan told them they could leave without battle only if they returned all their loot and Constantine became his vassal.
“The warriors must have grown restless meanwhile,” said Eirik when he heard.
“I think both sides were playing for time till their whole strength could reach the field,” answered Gunnhild.
He gave her a long look before he nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Shrewdly thought.”
The invaders attacked first. They worsted the English but did not break them. At the following sunrise the hosts strode back and forth, shields bright, spearheads and helmets shining, banners afloat on a brisk wind, horns and shouts riving it. Then they fell to.
The battle raged throughout that day. Foremost among the killers went Thorolf and Egil. At the end, the foe scattered and fled. Egil led the chase, his sword Adder hewing down man after fear-bewildered man. The dead lay in heaps and windrows across the moor. The cries and groans of the wounded met the shrieks of the birds wheeling earthward for their red food.
Egil found Thorolf slain.
No, thought Gunnhild, it should not have been Thorolf. She had not awaited such pain as now struck into her. The stark heart’s-ease was that Egil suffered too.
An Icelander who had been on hand told about it. Egil bore the body off, washed it and arrayed it, while a grave was dug. He laid Thorolf therein with garb and weapons, and put a gold ring on each arm. His men heaped earth and rocks above. Egil spoke a verse:
“Boldly into battle,
the bane of jarls, went Thorolf.
First among the fearless,
he fell when Odin beckoned.
Green upon his grave-mound,
grass will grow at streamside.
His brother’s grief is bitter.
Best that it stay hidden.”
What else he thought, he kept to himself.
As nearly as Gunnhild could reckon out, the meeting at Brunanburh happened about the same time, maybe on the same day, as she gave birth to her son Ragnfrod. She could dream that some of Thorolf’s warrior spirit passed into him.
Sorrow did not hold Egil back from looming and scowling at Aethelstan until the king bestowed rich reward on him for his deeds, together with payment that he should hand on to his father and kinsmen. This greatly cheered Egil. He made a poem that said so. Ever was he a greedy one, though not stingy. The last Gunnhild heard that year, he was spending the winter at Aethelstan’s court, in high honor.
The next tidings came from Önund, son of Thorgeir Thornfoot, who had a farm on the island Askey by the Hordafylki shore. Önund was the biggest of three brothers, so much so that he got the nickname Berg-Önund. After the death of Thora Orfrey-sleeve, Björn Brynjolfsson had taken a new wife and gotten a daughter on her. When she was old enough, Berg-Önund wedded this half-sister of Aasgerd.
He became friendly with King Eirik; they called on one another whenever they could. He it was who first brought the news that Thorir Hroaldsson had died. Thorir’s son Arinbjörn had taken over the holdings. Eirik gave him his father’s rank of hersir. “I know you mislike his being a friend of Egil Skallagrimsson,” Eirik said to Gunnhild, “but he’s otherwise a good man, utterly true once he’s given his word. There are too few like him.”
Now in summer Berg-Önund, having business southward, found Eirik and Gunnhild staying at a hall in Agdir. After they went inside and ale was poured, Eirik asked what was going on around the Sognefjord.
Berg-Önund’s huge frame shifted uneasily on the honor seat. His craggy face drew into a frown. “This will anger you,” he rumbled, “but Egil is back in Norway.”
Gunnhild swallowed a gasp. The fingers on her lap hooked like talons. She had better not say anything, though. Not yet.
“Tell me what you know,” bade Eirik in a steely voice.
“I’ve talked with men of his, and gone to Sygnafylki to see for myself,” Berg-Önund said. “After all, now Arinbjörn and I have the same ties with Björn Bry
njolfsson.” Who would leave riches to his heirs, Gunnhild thought. “It seems King Aethelstan wanted Egil to stay on for life. Egil answered that first he must see to Thorolf’s widow Aasgerd and any children of theirs. They had one who has lived, a girl named Thordis. Egil in England didn’t know this. He spoke of the inheritance that would be his if Thorolf had died childless.” Berg-Önund grated it forth. He had his own eye on that wealth, Gunnhild saw.
“Many of Egil’s men stayed behind, but about a hundred followed him, crew for a big longship. Arinbjörn gave him a good welcome and lodging for as long as he wished. I heard that Aasgerd was deeply unhappy at learning about her husband, but she’s bearing up well.”
“I daresay Egil will not be so unwise as to stray far from Arinbjörn’s,” hissed Eirik. Gunnhild understood. Enough men already felt vengeful toward this king. He would not take a band to slay a strong one whom he trusted, whom he even loved, which he must if he was to get at that man’s friend and guest. The sickness in her lightened a little when he added, “But watch for it as best you can, Önund, and tell me at once if it does happen.”
She would keep closer track than he.
Thus during the months word often sped to her through her network of spies. But there was nothing on which she could grip. Egil dwelt quietly.
By fall, however, he was downcast. He would sit unspeaking, head lowered into his cloak. At last Arinbjörn asked him what the trouble was. Yes, the loss of a dear brother was a sharp and heavy thing, but a man should go on with life. Egil answered in verses of tightly knit kennings. They must have heartened him, for he then said straightforwardly that he yearned for Aasgerd.
Together they brought this before her. She was not unwilling, but would leave it to her father and her cousin. A while afterward, Arinbjörn and Egil went to Björn, who was agreeable. They returned from that ride too soon, Gunnhild thought.
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