by Asotir
* * *
NOW THE SUN dropped behind the fell and the wood below was dark, though the ice on high was yet bright. Four of the Icelanders still lived: Svipdag Nurlason, Hogni Harald’s son, and Hvitserk Orm’s son lay dead. Beigath was lamed so that he might scarcely stand; his face was wan. Hjalti had lost his right hand, and the stump still bled; also he was sorely cut about the head. Bothvar was very badly cut about the middle, and some of his guts were hanging out. Starulf had few wounds, so that he might have been called unscathed. These four then sat about the stones and took counsel.
Bothvar said, ‘At nightfall we may go at him unawares.’
‘So he can come at us,’ answered Starulf. ‘And darkness does not widen ice.’
‘He is penned there now,’ said Hjalti. ‘Let us hold him there, and then one of us can ride for help.’
‘Will his wife’s kinfolk hereabouts give help to us or him?’ asked Starulf. ‘Ere the dawn break he will come at us. There is this, too: this place is famed for an outlaw-hole. There may be others about.’
‘And outlaws not the worst,’ said Beigath.
‘What then is your counsel,’ says Bothvar to Starulf.
‘You will little like the sound of it.’
‘We may not back down now,’ said Hjalti. ‘And now I think it unlikely we will get the better of him by arms alone.’
‘Well then, wait here,’ said Starulf. He went into the wood. Shortly he came back: in his arms he bore dead branches and twigs. It had not rained much on the fell, and the wood was dry.
The others looked on that, but said nought.
‘Now you see what I have in mind,’ Starulf said, and dropped the wood at their feet.
‘This is a shameful deed,’ said Beigath.
‘Is it less shameful, think you, to die at an outlaw’s hands and leave your brother unavenged? Or was it a greater deed of Skarphedin’s, when he burnt down Yrsi’s hall? Now maybe you, Beigath, will wish to go back to Hallgerd and tell her that we were too timid to go against the outlaw after Hogni’s death, but I would rather not do that.’
‘Well, but who need know of this?’ asked Hjalti. ‘If we light these at the cave-mouth, then the smoke will blind Skarphedin and drive him out: maybe the fire will melt some of the ice and he will fall off the tongue. Then we may set on him and slay him; and who is there to hear if we do not tell it?’
But Beigath scorned them. ‘There is a woman there, Swanhild Swart. I saw her in the cave, and she combed her long black hair. She would tell this tale both far and wide, and her tongue is a match for Hallgerd’s. I would sooner die than do anything so shameful.’
‘Go on, then,’ said Starulf. ‘I think that I could pick an abler fighter than from the halt in any case.’
Then Beigath’s face ran dark as blood, but he held himself in hand. Then he leaned on Svipdag’s spear and stood. He looked on Bothvar and Hjalti, but those two looked down on the branches and said nought. Beigath crawled onto his pony. With the spear-point he picked up Hogni’s cloak off the ground, and that cloak was all bloody, so that it seemed then more red than blue. Then he bade them bind Svipdag’s body on his pony for him: that they did. Beigath rode down into the wood, leading his brother’s body. The others were still awhile.
‘Now one of us must get a load of embers from the nearest neighbor,’ said Starulf; he bade Hjalti do it; so off rode Hjalti. It got darker then. When Hjalti came back the stars were out.
‘Who will bear it up to him?’ asked Bothvar. They had some words on this. That was the end of it, that they should all go up, first Starulf with the wood, then Bothvar with the coals, and then Hjalti. Now they take out their weapons and make ready, and creep up the ice-tongue softly as they might.
Bothvar frowns. The starlight gleams off the ice wall, but even so they can see little. ‘Where is he?’
‘He couldn’t have gone,’ Starulf says. ‘We should have heard him. Likely he is weary and has fallen asleep.’
‘Let’s get on with it,’ says Hjalti.
They crept up to the cave-mouth on hands and knees. Hjalti stood behind; he had bound a shield on his right arm and held his spear awkwardly in his left hand. Starulf laid down the wood softly as ever he might; Bothvar handed over the pot; Starulf blew on the coals till they were bright. Then he dumped them over the wood. It was so dark now that nought might be seen save for the coals and the fire starting, and blue gleams off the ice.
The fire spread. Starulf and Bothvar scrambled to their feet and drew their weapons. Laughter came forth from the cave-mouth: there was Skarphedin, his bloody chest all orange in the firelight. The Icelanders started back before him. Skarphedin stooped and swept up the wood in his arms and ran at them. He cast the fire over their heads beyond them, drew his axe and set on them.
Starulf and Bothvar raised their weapons, but Hjalti was there too and there was not room enough. They stumbled on the wood. Hjalti fell off the ice, and died first, then Bothvar lost his head and Skarphedin drove his axe deep into Starulf’s neck and chest. That was their end.
He leaned on his axe-haft, breathing and grinning.
Then from the cave-mouth came words: ‘Are they all dead now? Is it ended?’
‘I think henceforth they will have little use for their ponies,’ Skarphedin said.
Warily Swanhild came forth and found footing on the ice. The burning twigs crackled softly, but outside of that the dire stillness of the ice had come back. Skarphedin wiped his axe clean on Starulf’s cloak. The fire was waning, but in its light Swanhild saw her husband’s body, and that was all piebald with iron and flesh and blood and burns. She sucked in her breath and asked him,
‘Does it give you great pain?’
‘Not so much as it gives you,’ Skarphedin answered. He took her hair in one hand, pulled up her face and kissed her. His eyes were wild. ‘Surely, this is my best day since Glam’s death!’
‘Let’s go back to the shieling,’ she said.
They gathered the four ponies. Skarphedin donned his kirtle and a cloak, and they heaped up stones over the dead Icelanders. Then Swanhild mounted and Skarphedin leapt into the saddle; but he swayed to one side and all but fell. Swanhild gave out a little cry: Skarphedin shook his head and bade her keep still.
‘Tomorrow I will go to Breidamerk and talk with Njal,’ he said.
‘Your wounds are too great,’ she said.
‘I tell you I will go!’
In the night’s gloom he seemed big as a bear and burdensome as a troll. He spoke as if he had drunk deeply of mead, but Swanhild was sober unto death. She looked over the stones and ice and on those lopsided cairns wherein were caught the bodies of the slain, that were all cut-open and cold. Blue and ghastly seemed the night; and it stank. The ice wall was high over them all, and the cold air swept down off it over them. From far away arose the sound of the wind cutting over the ice-peaks high up on Vatnajokull. Then Swanhild muttered and said,
‘This is an ill abode, and I am sick at heart.’
‘It will need more than these to be my bane,’ Skarphedin said.
‘There will be more now,’ she answered.
They went back to the shieling. Kol had a fire lit. Swanhild washed Skarphedin and spread grease over his wounds, as her mother had taught her. They sat up together, and Skarphedin drank mead until morning. Then all that forenoon they slept, but in the afternoon Skarphedin set forth. He gave notice of the killings as was set down by law. Then he went on to the Breidamerk.
Seven
NOW AS FOR those two goodly horses, they fared back to Otkell all on their own. Otkell, as soon as he heard what had befallen, sent word to Skarphedin and asked how he should send them back. That was Skarphedin’s answer, that they had done him a good turn, and now Otkell might have them back if he would. But Otkell answered, that what he had given, that would he never take back. Skarphedin then let those horses be brought to Njal’s in Breidamerk, for by that time there were other plans afoot.
One night one of the thral
ls came into Vemund’s hall seeking Hallgerd. She was then in her bower. That was her wont, that she had many men and women about her, and they were drinking and gossiping and very merry. The thrall went to Hallgerd and said that there was a man without, and would speak with her. ‘But there is this too, lady: that man would not give out his name, nor do I know him. But he is the grimmest of men: don’t go out, but send some men out to him. It were safer thus.’
‘You are a fool,’ Hallgerd said. ‘I fear no thieves or hall-burners.’ She pulled a mantle about her shoulders, and in the firelight her hair glimmered like red gold. The menfolk put on their hats and took their weapons from the wall and went out after her, warily.
The lone horseman was dark against the night sky. His steed was weary and his garb grim and foul. He let his spear rest on his horse’s rump: over that spear was draped a linen, like a King’s standard.
Then Hallgerd said, ‘Now behold Beigath Nurla’s son come back from his errand in the east. What tidings does he bring?’
The rider shifts somewhat in his saddle, but says nought. Slowly he lets down his spear, so that the linen hangs before Hallgerd’s face. And that was a cloak all rent and dirtied with muck and men’s blood. It was blue beneath, of a goodly weave, and round its hem were worked threads of crimson and of gold. It was such a cloak, that there were not many thereabouts to match it. Hallgerd looked on it but said nought. But neither would Beigath move. Hallgerd takes it then into her hands, and in the lamplight her face seems somewhat hard.
‘And Skarphedin?’ she asks.
‘The word is, he lives still.’
‘Then how is it that you are still alive?’
Thereat some of those men with her muttered, and one of them, Hogni’s kinsman Orm, said, ‘Woman, what way is this of yours? Did you send your husband to his death, and will not grant him the least tear?’
She turned on them and they fell still. ‘But if there were one man among you, and you were not all fools and weaklings,’ she said, ‘then he would be even now planning his revenge. But Beigath, now you will tell us how many others like you ran off before the work was done.’
‘You need not lie awake nights a-fretting over that score, Hallgerd. But I will let some other tell that tale.’ He took rein then and rode away.
Those others went back inside the hall, but Hallgerd stayed out. She was then deep in thought. ‘Now that makes four families must seek atonement from the outlaw,’ she said. Silently on the rents and bloodstains of the cloak she toted up the strength of menfolk that might mean. And in the east the moon climbed over the hills.
At length she broke off and said, ‘So many, so many: but not a bold man among them, but all sheep-drivers, chapmen and carles.’
The moon had then something less than a quarter, and was what folk called a ‘cutting moon.’ Hallgerd called within and brought out her man Garm once more: him she bade fetch her pony and a pair of rams, ‘for I would make a blood-offering on the fell tonight.’
Garm shook his head, and set about that matter.
Eight
IT DID NOT always rain in Iceland, nor was it always cloudy there, but sometimes the sky was fair; and then the sunset was lovely to behold from the high fells. Now it was upon such an even that Swanhild and Skarphedin took their meat early, and went among the sheep in the meads above Haukshofn. Skarphedin had come back from Njal frowning, and had answered none of Swanhild’s questions; but tonight he was all smiles and mildness.
The grass where they walked was short, and the sheep chewed the bark on the few trees that still grew there. Kol gave them good greeting and had words with Skarphedin while Swanhild walked on. Some of the sheep bleated and brushed against her skirts. A great gentleness seemed to well up out of the earth and swallow them all.
Swanhild called to Skarphedin. ‘Let’s follow the stream up and sit beside the Svartifoss.’
They went up higher on the fell. The winds had fallen. They lay down in a little mossy hollow by the rapids. The great black rocks stood like fingers in the river’s flow. Some hawks flew by: there were many a hawk on the fells, and even more skuas below. Swanhild lay against Skarphedin’s chest, let down her apron and spilled out those flowers she had gathered. They might have been lovers, in another land.
One by one Swanhild took the flowers up: and some she bound in Skarphedin’s red beard, and the rest set to weave into a necklet. Skarphedin let his head fall back onto the moss. After awhile he began to sing verses; but Swanhild let a flower fall between his lips and stilled him. After that they were still as the shadows grew.
When she had done with the necklet, then Swanhild held it up to the sky; but all at once she shuddered, and the crown fell off her fingers.
‘What is amiss?’ Skarphedin asked. His voice was sleepy.
‘Nought: all is well here,’ Swanhild answered: ‘so why then does this deep fear dance around my heart, as if I had seen fetches? There seems no surety in the world nor peace.’
‘Do your thoughts run still on that small quarrel on Svinafell?’
‘No, no … all the same, I am glad that few fights are so ugly.’
‘Why,’ he answered, ‘that was very blithesome when stood against others I have seen.’ More he might have said, but that she laid her fingers softly over his lips and said,
‘Skarphedin, don’t kill me.’
Once more they were still. Skarphedin watched her out the corner of his eyes, and seemed as though he waited. Then Swanhild sighed a deep sigh and said, ‘My father was not always so. And Hardbein Oxen-Hand would not let go a whit of his rights, not to any man, not even to King Harald the mighty. Then in those winters, only weaklings and thrall-born men ever lived on in shame. Then were all the nights and winters fair. Jarl Haakon was right that he picked this time to die. There is nowhere left in the world for high-mindedness when such a man could come to so shameful a death.’
Skarphedin said, ‘These fells here have not lessened any since before King Harald the Mighty’s first breath.’
A light grew in Swanhild’s eye. ‘Do you deem these great? In the north are others twelvefold their height. I was a girl when I saw them. That was the sport that day, that all the young men made trial of the cliff beside the falls: that was named the Æsirs’ Bridge, for that no man had yet climbed them from below. That day many tried it: two fell and one got his death of it, and that was the first man’s death I ever saw. But none won the peak. My mother laughed and chid my father, that he did not try it.
‘At first he would not. He was older and greater of girth than any of those others. Then my mother spoke him soft sweet words: he stripped bare and set to the climb. I was afraid and I cried out that he should not; my mother cuffed me and bade me not shame him. Then I was still, but I shut my eyes. I heard a shouting then: I looked and saw him: he stood on the rocks above the falls, and laughed…’
‘I too knew him in those days,’ Skarphedin said. ‘Only Thorold Skeggi’s son might then have been called his match of all the men of the side. But he should not have left your mother unpaid-for.’
Then Swanhild shut her eyes, and spoke very softly, and said, ‘Only, do not die, Skarphedin, and leave me as my father was left.’
‘That will fall as things will fall,’ he answered. ‘But I could ask the same of you, and get no better answer.’
She looked upon him. ‘And would you stay on here after I died?’
‘Maybe so. But maybe I would go.’
‘There is what marks you and me apart,’ she said. ‘You might go, but I must stay.’
She looked away. She seemed forlorn. Then he sat up and tugged at her dress. ‘In Saxland and Wendland, across the seas,’ he said, ‘the folk tell another tale than ours. There they say the Swan-maiden shall abide as the thrall to the thief that took her Swan-shift, until a Knight shall come and rescue her.’
She did not look back. But she answered, ‘That what you have stolen, that no man may give back to me; nor would I have it back.’ He laughed, but she said,<
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‘Skarphedin, take me away from Iceland.’
‘There will be time and more to talk of that this winter.’
‘No. Don’t take me next summer. Take me now.’
‘The storms will come soon. Few ships will be leaving; and we would need a twofold share of luck to fare across safely.’
‘That will fall as things will fall. But it must be now or it will never be.’
‘Whither then would you lead me, Swan-witch?’
‘In Greenland men are said to have holdings open still, and Killing-Erik will never take to any of these sea-borne gods. Or else, the Swede-realm is said to uphold the home-gods still, though they own one King over all the rest.’
‘I have not gone much into that land. But I know men there at King Olaf’s court. The winters there are hard, though, and there is more snow-fall. The wolves do not go hungry long; and Kings were ever fickle and untrustworthy.’
‘I will take that gladly. Well? Will you?’
For awhile he would only look at her, and said nought. Then at length he said, ‘You are very eager for this thing now. What of your father?’
‘Don’t ask me all this! This is my wish, that this summer we fare from Iceland and come back never again.’ She leaned over his chest, and laid one hand into his thick beard: her lips were a little agape, and her eyes narrowed: there was a shadow about her face from the black blue hair. Her breasts swelled and fell against his side. ‘Won’t you take me, Skarphedin? Yes. You will: for I will have it so.’
He stirred in his place. There was an odd look in his face. ‘You are very like your mother now,’ he said. His words were low and thick. ‘And yet, this thing might still be done. Njal has a ship, and has offered it to me ere now. If he help us, we might yet go this summer.’
‘Shall it hang from that milk-beard, then? Skarphedin, I dreamed a dream one night I never told you. That was the way of that dream, that a skua flew round about me; and it held a fish very fair to behold. Then a hawk came down out of the fells, and flew likewise about me; and at first it seemed as though those two birds had flown together; but when he saw that I would have that fish, then the hawk slew the skua and put down that fish at my feet.’
‘Then you dreamed ill.’ Skarphedin scowled, and his words came out like growls: Swanhild had never seen a man so angry. ‘This is not the first time you have made as though to put Njal and me apart, but this will fare no better than any of those others. Now you will hear me on this: Njal is my foster-brother. And that is a thing that runs deeper and faster than any husband’s love. Together we grew up; together we were men; and we swore it too, before the gods on a felltop.’
Swanhild drew back from him, wan more for fear than anger. There was a wildness in her eyes and bearing. She was lovely for all that, but also mournful and unsafe. ‘Njal no longer swears by those gods, Skarphedin. He has forsworn them and you.’ But Skarphedin said nought.
‘Once I dreamed of gods,’ she said. ‘Often my mother sang to me of them. Sometimes I feared my mother, but never then: never when she sang to me. And later on I dreamed of the gods, when my blood first ran: Rannveig, that was my father’s wish-wife, taught me the meaning of that. But I grew up and my father grew gray: no gods came and no heroes, but only sheep and sheep’s men. Then one night I stood out on a rock in the rain and spoke to those gods. I had no more trust in temples. I would have of them a token, and vowed I would give them nought more if they did not mend their ways. That night went away with no taken but an ill one: that day my father took the sea-borne gods. But that night I gave them an offering even so.’ Then she smiled, a bleak ill smile.
‘Well,’ said Skarphedin, ‘now you sound much like those others I have heard, who were first to cast aside the home gods for others. That was ever the way of the gods, that they minded men ill. What should the gods care for common men? Odin is sly and fickle-hearted, Thor not the cleverest, and the rest little better. It is fitting that a man should call on them in time of need and give them good offerings if they help him. But he should trust more in his own strength and cunning.’
‘But there are the tales-of-old such as my mother sang. Shouldn’t the gods wax wrothful that their temples are brought down and outland gods upheld instead? Have they forsaken us, or were those tales nought but lies?’
‘Swanhild, who can answer such riddles? Why then bother over them?’
She looked at him for a space. Then she said, heavily, ‘Skarphedin, you are a man born, and may fare abroad and winter in Kings’ courts. But what shall a woman do but sit and churn and milk and weave and brood, and grow old over her children and suchlike riddles as these? Little enough of fame do we get, and much of that is ill. “Man needs strength, but woman’s needs are skill and thoughtfulness.” A woman may wed a mighty man; she will still be caught.’
She stood away from him, and he sat up on a stone on the moss, frowning: but her arms flew about and her words ran on ever so quickly. He answered, slowly,
‘That may be as you say, but that is the way of things. But at all ends, you will not set me against Njal. He may not be all that I would wish, but old is the saying, “Bare is back without brother.” That will never be, that he and I should be set at odds. Sooner than that we both would die.’
Swanhild shook her head. There were plainly more words on her lips, but she stilled them, turned and went away.
Skarphedin sat frowning by the stream for awhile. The wind arose, and the air waxed chill. In the end he rose and went looking for her; and therein he seemed drawn willing or not.