In winter, therefore, the wedding was held at Arinbjörn’s. He spared nothing on the feast. Thereafter Egil was blithe. It seemed he was kind to his wife, for she smiled afresh.
In spring, though, Arinbjörn warned them not to linger in Norway. “Gunnhild grows ever more powerful,” he said. “She hates you, and it really worsened when you met with her brother Eyvind off Jutland.” Egil got a knarr and crew, loaded her with trade goods, and waited for the right wind. When it came, he boarded with Aasgerd and little Thordis and stood out to sea.
That was toward fall again, few ships sailing. Hence a while went by before Gunnhild learned he had made a good, fast crossing to Iceland and settled down on his father’s steading Borg.
By then it mattered less to her. She had borne a daughter, Ragnhild. This child she would keep at home, nurse her, sing to her, raise her to womanhood as her own. Too soon did her sons go off to fostering. She dreaded that they would grow apart from each other like most of Harald’s. With Ragnhild she could weave bonds of love.
That much tenderness would be as welcome as a cool, bubbling spring to one who has long wandered thirstier than she knew. By now, Gunnhild foresaw fresh bloodshed in Norway.
XV
Homebound from a summer’s raiding in the Baltic, Eirik took his ships up an inlet near the Oslofjord, to Tunsberg. The town drew traders not only from around Vikin but from northern Norway, Denmark, and Saxland. It lay in Vestfold, over which Harald Fairhair had set his son Björn as shire-king. That man seldom went to war; instead, he sent merchant ships far and wide, growing wealthy thereby. Thus he came to be called the Skipper or the Chapman.
One by one Eirik’s craft rowed through the gateway of the palisade, which blocked off the waterfront and met the landward stockade at either end. He lay to at a jutting wharf and led his crew ashore. His other ships anchored farther out, for the docks were still busy even this late in the season. Planks thudded under the feet of men loading or unloading, the hoofs of packhorses, the creaky wheels of oxcarts. Gulls soared and mewed in their hundreds. A sharp wind wrinkled the bay. Cloud shadows harried wan sunlight. Eirik strode between thatch-roofed buildings of timber or wattle-and-daub, over ground that yesterday’s rain had made muddy. Men and women looked uneasily, children stared and shouted, at his mail-clad troop. Smells eddied, woodsmoke, peatsmoke, cookery, dung, dyestuff. A smithy door stood open on white-ruddy coals and clashing hammer. Above everything else loomed the king’s hall.
Told of Eirik’s coming, Björn had taken his high seat there. His guards flanked him. Although the newcomers stacked spears, axes, and shields in the entry, swords still hung at shoulders and metal sheened on bodies. Björn did not rise for his half-brother, but greeted him rather coldly and offered him only the seat for an honored guest, across from his. Ale and mead were brought. They drank without much cheer.
After some words of news had dragged themselves to and fro, Björn asked, “Why did you stop here?”
“This is the time of year when you send his half of the Vestfold scot and rents to our father King Harald,” said Eirik.
“Or else I bring them to him myself.”
“I know. Well, give them over to me, and I’ll spare you the trip.”
Björn flushed. He sat unspeaking for a bit. One could hear men breathing throughout the hall. “No,” he said then. “That’s my work. I will always oversee it.”
Eirik frowned. “Don’t you trust me?” he asked slowly.
Björn did not answer straight out. “It is also my honor. Nobody shall take that from me.”
“Are you so unsure of it?” fleered Eirik.
Björn reddened more deeply. “I am not, and I say nothing against others, but in some I have scant faith.”
Maybe he had heard, maybe he now remembered, how Thorolf Kveldulfsson had been slandered about the gathering of the Finn-scot and ended by dying at King Harald’s own hand. His arm chopped like an ax helve. “I will do as I’ve been wont to do, and will not talk further about it.”
Eirik on his side had whitened beneath the weathered skin. “I have a greater errand anyway. We’ve had a long, hard faring and run short of everything but booty—and weapons. Some of the thralls we took, too, have gone sickly and might die on us if they don’t soon get a rest and a good feed. We’ll camp for a few days. Give us food, tents, and drink.”
Again Björn sat for a span, thinking, before he shook his head. “No. I don’t want a gang like that here, nor will the townsfolk. Brawls and killings would be too likely. Best you leave no later than tomorrow. You haven’t far to go at all.”
Eirik narrowed his eyes. “Do you withhold help from your brother?”
“If I believed you were in need, it would be unmanly of me,” growled Björn, “but as is, it would be unmanly to yield.”
“You kick me out, then, like a dog?”
“No. But this is my kingdom. You have your own.”
They wrangled thus, barely keeping their seats, Björn’s voice ever louder, often choking, Eirik’s low and hard. At last Eirik got up. “I won’t demean myself by staying any longer,” he said. “Nor have I any thanks for so closefisted and boorish a host.” Men’s gaze tracked him as he and his stalked from the hall.
He was silent on his way back through Tunsberg. No warrior cared to speak either. When townsfolk, drawing aside, beheld the faces, the same hush fell over them.
Aboard his ship, he ordered her out to anchor with the rest. There he sent for their skippers, who came to him by the boats that most of them towed. Talk was harsh. “If Björn were the peaceable man they call him,” Eirik said, “he would not have given me such a slap. He must be plotting against me.” Nobody wondered aloud what Eirik himself had had in mind.
Keen eyes saw a band of men ride through a gate, northward along the bay. “Yonder goes the king,” said a household trooper who hailed from these parts. “Belike he’s off to a house he owns in Saeheim, two or three miles hence.”
“Withdrawing lest a fight begin?” asked another.
“Or to hatch an egg he’s brooding on,” clipped Eirik. “We could be waylaid and overwhelmed. Such things have happened often enough. At the very least, he hopes we’ll skulk cowardly off. The name of weakling brings on weakness; men turn to leaders they think are strong. We’ll forestall him.”
His ships rowed from the haven, down the inlet and the fjord beyond sight of town. Where shoals met a wide strand, they grounded. A farmstead lay nearby. Warriors jumped ashore and ran to it. “We’ll not hurt you if you keep inside till we’re gone,” the headman told the dwellers. “Otherwise, you’re dead.”
The sun set. Leaving a few behind on watch, Eirik took his vikings north. A half-moon fled among clouds. Wind shrilled and bit; dry leaves flew off darkling trees; stubblefields reached gray and shadow-pitted; sometimes a dog howled. They bypassed the bulk that was Tunsberg, found the road beyond, and hurried over its ruts. Soon a few houses crouched before them, the hamlet Saeheim. Windows glowed in the biggest. Björn and his followers were at drink.
Eirik beckoned right and left. Well drilled, his men sped to ring the building in. The noise was nonetheless loud. Firelight flickered forth as the front door opened for those inside to peer out. Eirik trod into it. “Tell King Björn that King Eirik is here to go on with our business,” he bade them.
A yell arose. Iron rattled. “He’ll not burn us, that wolf’s head!” Björn shouted.
He had never been a man of war, but he had had his battles, and kept ships alive in storms. He ordered his guards to press through the doorway heel and toe. The first died quickly; those behind broke free and laid about them. Swords clattered; axes thucked; cries flew up to the hasty moon. “Björn!” called some and “Eirik!” others. Else they could hardly have told friend from foe in the murk.
Yet Eirik’s men were better clad for strife, and knew well what to do. Björn got no time to rally his. They died alone or in small bunches. Feet trampled the wounded where they writhed, bones crunched, or feet sl
ipped on spilled guts, while the death-reek thickened.
When stillness had fallen, but for heavy panting and a few groans, Eirik sought Björn. Drops of blood fell off Eirik’s shield, down onto the sprawled lich. Björn gaped hollowly back. “You fought well, brother mine,” Eirik said. “May your grave-mound long stand untroubled.” He grinned. “But you’ll agree, won’t you, now you’re one fewer to fret about.”
His followers looted the house, taking a goodly plunder, and went back to their ships. In the morning they sailed on homeward. Harald Fairhair sighed but said only that a fitting payment and peace should be made.
Folk throughout the shires of Vikin were in an uproar. They had liked King Björn. This work boded ill. Björn’s half-brother and friend, King Olaf of neighboring Vingulmork, vowed vengeance. He took Björn’s widow and son into his care, and claimed lordship over the slain man’s Vestfold. Thenceforward Eirik bore the nickname Blood-ax. Both he and Gunnhild rather liked it.
XVI
Weather or no, that winter he took ship north to Moerr to see to his holdings and power in those two shires. Landing near the mouth of the Thraandheimsfjord, he lodged with his men at Sölivi, where he had a garth. Thence he would make his rounds by land and water, and there he would make the Yule offering. Gunnhild stayed in the South, being again very near her time.
Word of this passed down the great bay to Thraandheim. The shires of that rich, rolling land stretched widely north and south along the sea, eastward into the mountains. Its folk were strong and stiff-necked, with ways and laws of their own. King Harald had bestowed lordship over it among his sons Haalfdan the White, Haalfdan the Black, and Sigrod. Haalfdan the White had since fallen in west-viking. The other two got along well, both having been foster sons of Haakon, the mighty jarl of Hladi. After Haakon’s death they stayed on with his son Sigurd, who was about their own age. Sigrod, though, being the youngest of the three, kept somewhat in the background.
To Sigurd, then, came King Haalfdan the Black. The jarl made him fittingly welcome. Hladi overlooked the inner fjord. Its lands reached beyond sight, grainfields, meadows, woods, farmsteads, hamlets. Its ships filled many sheds, and in summer lined many wharfs. Hladi hall reared huge, with soaring roofs, high rooms, cunning carvings, and beautiful hangings, as grand as any king’s. Its outbuildings well-nigh made a small town. Folk swarmed, workers, warriors, women, children, guests often in great numbers. Fine were the gifts to the foremost among them. Wealth stuffed coffers and strongrooms. Kings came and went, but the jarls of Hladi abided, lifetime after lifetime, they who owned the hearts of the Thraands.
“I must talk alone with you, as soon as may be,” whispered Haalfdan after he and Sigurd had greeted one another.
The jarl nodded. “I thought so. I can guess what it’s about, too. Well, let it be at once, while your men are settling in.”
He gave a few orders and the two of them walked off, half a dozen guards at their back out of earshot. Taking a path above the water, they left the garth behind. The sky was low and leaden, glooming toward eventide. Air hung raw-cold. Patches from the last snowfall dappled sere grass. A shaw of birch stood barebones white, firs like harbingers of oncoming night. Crows cawed.
“Well?” asked Sigurd quietly.
Haalfdan rushed into it, as fiery as he always was. “You must have heard that Eirik Blood-ax is at Sölivi.”
“Of course.” Sigurd glanced a bit upward at the king, who topped him by half a head. Sigurd himself, though not tall, was as broad-shouldered and well knit; gray eyes looked out of a strong-boned, blunt-nosed face. The hair and beards of both men were swart. “Before you ask, no, he does not have a big following. You have more. But his are all picked and proven fighters.”
“Still, they’re not awaiting callers, are they?”
“I don’t believe they are, nor do they mean to do any harm. Think, though. When we unleash that kind of hound, we can never foresee where he’ll run or what he’ll pull down.”
“Eirik has already let slip the beast,” rasped Haalfdan. “Rögnvald, Björn— who’s next? Worse yet, our father backs him.”
“I think King Harald mainly fears that when he’s gone, his sons will rend asunder the kingdom he hammered together.”
“But must the high king after him be Eirik? Belike few of his brothers would long outlive that. And the Thraands have been glad enough to have me steering them.”
Sigurd did not remind Haalfdan that he and Sigrod had ties to him, their jarl, who stood between them and overweening Harald. “Folk elsewhere might feel otherwise,” he said half under his breath. Then: “Are you here to ask my rede about falling on Eirik? It is; don’t.”
Haalfdan paced on, scowling. Sigurd Jarl was wise as well as wily. Also, he was an unstinting offerer to the gods, who therefore must look kindly on him. Nevertheless— A crow jeered. “What if I do anyhow?” he barked.
“I won’t help,” Sigurd answered. “It seems to me that things here in the North have not yet come to swords’ point, and you’re being rash. Nor will I hinder. Whatever this leads to, I and the Thraands will stand by our kings as long as they stand by us.”
“Then why will you not now?”
“Because later on there may well be more need of my strength.”
They walked and talked until the unseen sunset turned them back. That evening the feast ended early. Haalfdan was set on his course and would start off at dawn. In summer it was a long day’s ride from here to Sölvi, but days were dwindling down to a glimmer. How fast anybody could go after dark hung on the weather.
Thus it came about that Eirik woke in the middle of Haalfdan’s second night.
Maybe it was luck; maybe it was in the song the norn sang at his cradle; maybe it was Gunnhild’s warding spell. The house at Sölvi had turned out to be foul-smelling, not yet sweetened as it should have been. His troopers didn’t mind, but Eirik had straw heaped in a shed offside and slept there.
Racket of hoofs and halloos yanked him from dreams. He leaped to his feet. His hand knew its way through blackness to clasp the spear that rested beside him. Cat-wary, he opened the door a crack and peered. A nearly full moon shone aloft, a frost-ring around it. His breath smoked in its icy light. Helmets, byrnies, and blades sheened amidst shadow. Men had surrounded the house. They were springing off their horses, drawing swords, raising axes, slanting spears. Outrunners of theirs must stealthily have fallen on outposts of his, Eirik knew; then the lot of them galloped the last mile.
As he watched, warriors surged from the doors. Edged iron cut them down. More attackers made ranks to bar every way out. Kindled from tinder, a torch flared.
They were after him, Eirik knew. If they got him, his sons were foredoomed to wretchedness or early death.
Five of his guards had by turns spread their sleeping bags on the ground by the shed. Unheeded in the tricky light, they joined him. “We can dash forth and die with our fellows,” Eirik said, “but better is to escape and avenge them.” Fumbling in the gloom, he donned clothes, underpadding, and mail. They all wrapped cloaks around themselves before they stole off. His ships lay not far away, a few watchmen on the strand beside. He chose one and put everybody aboard. Undermanned, she rowed slowly seaward. Behind her, fire flickered against the stars like northlights and the roar of burning came faintly like surf.
On his way back, Eirik learned who had led the onslaught. When King Harald heard, he went as wrathful as ever he got. At once he and Eirik called up levies to go north. Haalfdan the Black heard, and raised his own; Thraandish men flocked to his banner.
However, others went between, hoping to make peace. Among these was a skald, Guthorm the Dwarf. He was with Haalfdan, but had formerly been with Harald, and was still a friend of both. Indeed, once he had made a poem in their praise. When they offered him a reward, he only wanted that at some later time they should give him what he asked for. This they plighted. Few gifts were greater than a well-wrought verse of honor, and a man of honor could not give less in return. Now
Guthorm asked for peace. Because of him and the rest, maybe Sigurd Jarl above all, the kings came to terms. Having duly paid for the slain, Haalfdan should keep his lordship, while he and Eirik kept hands off one another.
Gunnhild clutched her new son Erling to her breast. Haalfdan the Black had tried to kill her man. He had come near doing it. Thereby he had earned death.
XVII
The host against his son was the last that Harald Fairhair raised. He did not go along, being too old for hard faring. When peace of a kind followed, it was as if something within him sighed and let go its hold on his strength. Thereafter, most of the time he sat thickly wrapped in furs against the winter cold, maybe inwardly speaking with friends, foes, and loves long dead, maybe fighting again his battles and hearing again the shouts of victory.
Eirik and Gunnhild were with him at his great steading on the island Körmt, hard by the Rogaland coast in the southwest, for the springtide offering. He stood in a bleak wind and spatters of rain, where flames hissed and smoke blew low: big, his white head high, but the shoulders slumped as if under the weight of a paunch the stiff legs could hardly upbear. When he walked back to the hall, it was slowly. Often Gunnhild saw his lips tighten within the beard, against pain.
That evening after meat he bade the headman of his guards call for silence. The fires themselves seemed to crackle softly. Eyes gleamed steel-white. His voice still rumbled, but the lack of many teeth slurred it. “Hark and hear well. I, Harald Haalfdansson, your king, speak, I who broke every king and chieftain that stood against me and laid all Norway under my hand. I quelled vikings and robbers; I gave good laws; I brought trade and wealth flowing in; I made us mighty in the world. But Elli, who wrestled Thor to his knee, has her grip on me. While I am yet above earth, I will see to it that my work does not fall to bits when I am gone, but passes into strong and able hands. Hear me. I now give to my son Eirik the full power that has been mine. I call on you to witness this, and call on the Things throughout the land to hail him when next they meet. Eirik, henceforward be at my side.”
Mother of Kings Page 16