War of the Gods

by Poul Anderson

  Next day they met alone in a loft room of the hall. Long were they there. Sundown was close, unseen through a fog that swirled and dripped outside, when he said, “We seem to be coming to an understanding. If you will wed me, you shall have queenly honors here in Denmark.”

  She knew well that he had a wife at home in Ranriki, and two more in the neighboring lands that he had made his. This she did not care much about. He would seldom be with her either. Gram had left her side before his death, not briefly for a leman but altogether for Signy. She, Gro, was the daughter of a king, whom Gram had slain.

  “For this, I am to give you my help and counsel,” she said.

  He nodded. “The Danes are not glad of me. But I want no more from them than what belongs to a king, landholdings, scot, honor, and defense against raiders. I will not often be here, nor will I take Danish levies abroad. My mark is Svithjod, which welters leaderless. I cannot overmaster it unless Denmark stays quiet at my back. Aid me to that, Gro, and you shall be queen also among the Swedes and Geats—your folk.”

  “To that end,” she said slowly, “you must bring the great men among the Danes to agreement, jarls, sheriffs, chieftains.”

  “Even so.” Svipdag spoke harshly. He would have liked better to overwhelm anybody who gainsaid him.

  “It begins with Gram’s close kin, his cousins, his daughters by different women, their fosterers and husbands,” she went on. “You must give them not only surety, but weregild according to how near in blood they are.”

  “With you beside me in rede and deed, I hope this may be done.”

  “Some will say no. They can be set on and killed, unless they flee the land first. It will bring others to a kindlier mood.”

  “Yon Signy could have her throat cut out of hand,” said Svipdag with a grin.

  Gro shook her head. “No. That would only enrage her friends and her father. You can ill afford the trouble he could make for you. Let the Finn-woman go back to him.” She spat it out. In truth, though, Signy’s blood was Norse.

  Svipdag barked a laugh. “Already you begin earning the morrow I will give you.”

  She stared straight into his eyes. “You shall have no more from me, but only ill will and whatever harm I can do, unless I get one thing above all others.”

  “I think I know what that is,” Svipdag growled.

  She nodded. “You must recall my son, Gudorm, swear peace with him, and give him a high standing. For this I came here when you asked, and I will take no less.”

  “Well, I will try,” Svipdag said, “but what if he will not?”

  “We shall see how that goes,” Gro answered. “Bring my son to me and let me speak with him.”

  The upshot was that Signy sold what she had to buy a ship and hire a crew. In spring, when weather allowed, she sailed off to Finland. Meanwhile men of Svipdag’s crossed the Sound and rode through Scania to Yvangar.

  Braki and his wife gave them a grudging welcome. His was no kingly dwelling. A well-built house and its outbuildings stood around a stone-paved yard. Kine grazed widely about, fields awaited the plow, and leaf buds laid green mist over a woodlot. Many other steadings were in sight. Beyond lay the wilds, where men logged, hunted, fished, and trapped. The uplands that were forbidden them lifted hazy blue in the north.

  All these farms had bred sturdy young men and looked to Braki for leadership. Svipdag’s riders spoke softly as they asked for Gudorm and told what they had for him. Braki said that he was not here and it would take days to reach him. The chieftain would go, but with only a few close-mouthed followers. The Norsemen could cool their heels in his home.

  So he came back to Vagnhöfdi’s house. The giant took him in with gruff good cheer and they all sat about the fire, in a rank gloom, while wind hooted outside and from afar sounded the howling of wolves.

  Braki gave Gudorm the word given him. “You may return to Denmark for peace and power, if you will swear yourself to King Svipdag.”

  “But this is wonderful!” cried the youth.

  “Your father fell at his hands,” Braki said.

  Gudorm flushed, looked away, and mumbled, “Here I can’t even see to the well-being of my mother. And how could I ever hope for vengeance? Instead of skulking in the woods till I die like an outlaw, why can’t I—win back honor—if I take a weregild worthy of my father, and, and keep his blood alive?”

  “Bide your time,” rumbled Vagnhöfdi. “Who knows what may happen? Bide your time.”

  “You never say anything else!” Gudorm screamed. “I’m sick of it!” He leaped up and ran out. Nor did he come back until after dark, when the rest were asleep.

  In the morning-Braki took him off alone. Gudorm told his foster father how he hated this rough and lonely life and was bound that he would take Svipdag’s offer. Braki put it a little more mildly to the thursir.

  They made Gudorm swear that he would utter no word to anyone about Hadding. Hardgreip said he must not leave yet. She seethed strange things in a kettle, cut runes in an ash stave, daubed them with blood from a nick she made in his thumb, and sang eerily beneath a crooked moon. “If you betray us, a doom will come on you that is not good,” she told him.

  “We had no need of your nasty witchcraft,” he said, white-faced, “and I will be well rid of you.”

  Thereafter he rode off with Braki, and from Braki’s home back to Zealand. Svipdag met him without much warmth but with full honor, while Gro watched. The king paid him for his father’s death and, Gram’s jarls being all dead or fled, made Gudorm, young though he was, jarl over the whole of Den-mark. Men said to each other that belike this lad would more trustworthily keep the peace and gather in the scot than someone might who was full grown.

  Now Svipdag led a fleet over the Sound and up the Baltic shore to the Skerrygarth. Rowing through that many-islanded water, deep into Svithjod, he landed, struck swiftly, and took Uppsala. There he held a great slaughter to the gods, and began overrunning the whole kingdom. Houses burned, men fell slain, women were made booty, until one by one the shires yielded to him.

  His thoughts about Gram’s child by Signy were few and short. It was not with its mother. Nobody could tell him where it might be, nor felt that it mattered. What danger was in a mewling babe? Belike she had left it at some poor croft, where neighbors would hardly mark it among the other bantlings. If it lived to grow up, it would know nothing more than how to grub a meager living out of the ground. Svipdag soon forgot about it.

  V

  Nursed at the breasts of a giantess, Hadding grew swiftly and strongly. Before long he was eating the same fare as the rest: meat from the hunt, fish from the waters, milk and cheese and butter from the cows, bread from grain that mother Haflidi grew in a clearing and ground on a quern as big as a man. Roots, leaves, sedges, mushrooms, and grubs were food to pick up along the trail. In their seasons came also nuts, berries, and the honey of wild bees. Vagnhöfdi brewed ale and mead, but Hardgreip taught Hadding that every spring and every stream had its own taste, its own magic.

  Much else did he learn from the thursir. Going by himself rather than with the hounds, he became a keen hunter, wily trapper, patient fisherman. He could flay a quarry, cut it up, cook its meat, tan its skin, find uses for guts and bones. He could make and wield a fire drill, weave branches together for a shelter, read clouds and winds to foreknow weather, find his way by the heavens both day and night, bind up a wound or set a broken limb. He shaped stone and iron into tools for which he whittled the hafts. The iron itself Vagnhöfdi found in bogs and brought back to wrest from its ore with his overhuman strength.

  The wilderness was Hadding’s home, which he came to know through every depth and every change. He wandered through the quick rains and quickening leaves of spring while returning birds darkened the sky with wings and filled it with clamor. He was out in the long days and light nights of summer, green growth and sun-speckled shade, warmth and thunderstorm and the manifold smells of life. He ghosted under trees gone red and yellow in fall, his feet
rustling nothing, and from hilltops looked into hazy farnesses or down at drifting mists. He ranged through winter on skis and skates, unheeding of cold, not only beneath the low sun but after dark if it was clear and the stars gleamed in their hosts above the snow.

  Yet always the waters drew him most, above all the biggest lake thereabouts. As often as ever he could, he sought its banks and gazed over its shining reaches. When a wind ruffled it, something thrilled in him and the lap-lap of wavelets was a song. He would strip off his clothes, wade out through the reeds, and swim for hour after hour like an otter. In a dugout boat he kept there he could spend a whole day dreaming more than fishing. Besides a paddle, he used a mast and sail he had made, awkward though the rig was. He wondered mightily about the sea of which he had heard. Someday he would go seek it. The longing waxed as his body lengthened.

  Otherwise his childhood with the thursir passed happily enough. It did not trouble him that they overtopped him so hugely. He took that for given. They were kind to him in their rough way, though when they got a little heedless he might be knocked three or four yards aside and blossom for a while in bruises. They shared much of their lore, tales and verses going back to the beginning of the worlds, their speech deep and hoarse and slow. Thus he picked up something of the Old Tongue from Jotunheim. Mostly, however, they spoke the speech of his folk when with him. It was better fitted to the things of Midgard.

  They had their feast times during the year, which were not the feasts of men but remembered such happenings as the shaping and slaying of Ymir, the binding of Garm and Fenris, and, more merrily, Utgard-Loki’s fooling of Thor. Mirth came easily to them, for they were of simple heart.

  Yet they could be terrible. When Vagnhöfdi was angry, he would bellow, fling boulders about that splintered the trees they hit, launch a landslide, or seek a bear to kill with his naked hands. Hardgreip, who had fondled and sung to and cared for Hadding in his babyhood, liked to run down a deer or an elk, slash it open, and wallow like a wolverine on its bloody carcass, ripping the raw meat with her teeth.

  Hadding did not take to these ways. Braki had told him, aside, that they were not seemly for a man. Still, Hadding did not hold them against his fosterers. Mostly Hardgreip was more brash than mad. Seen from afar, so that she dwindled in sight, she was like a good-looking young woman, full bodied, heavy bosomed, her hair long and raven black, her face high in the cheekbones, curved in the nose, broad in the lips, with slant green eyes under thick brows. After Hadding turned from boy to youth, he often found himself a post from which he could watch her thus. It was best when she sought a pool to bathe in. He did not feel ashamed, for he knew she knew what she did, and she flashed him a grin.

  Once, out alone on a winter night, he spied a band of light elves riding by. Starlight glittered on their helms and byrnies as it did on the snow; northlights danced on high like the banners that streamed from their spears. ‘White too were their horses, slim and wind-swift, bounding from worldedge to worldedge in a few heartbeats. Above them flew a great owl. They sped past in utter stillness, but as they left Hadding’s ken their leader sounded his horn. Those notes haunted him for years.

  When he told this in the house, Vagnhöfdi scowled and rumbled that that had been no lucky sign. The light elves were too friendly with the gods. The swart elves sometimes did jotuns’ bidding, but one must beware of them too. They were as safe to deal with as wolves.

  He also disliked the dwarves. Miners and craftsmen who had wrought many wondrous things, they were greedy, short-tempered, and apt to lay curses that worked through lifetime after lifetime. Vagnhöfdi called it good that none dwelt underground hereabouts.

  Monsters formerly laired in these wilds, nicors lurking under meres in wait for beasts or men, trolls that liked human flesh best, hagbirds, a dragon. During his hundreds of years he had killed most of them after they made trouble for him, but it was still wise to shun some hills and lakes.

  Other beings he could not fight. He and his steered clear of them: night-gangers, land-wights, the unrestful dead. Yet this was not altogether so. Hadding learned that when he went with Hardgreip on a trek of three days that ended in the dark.

  Haflidi had been plowing her field. For this she needed no horse or ox, but pushed the ard herself. She turned up a slab of rock into which runes had been chiseled. When she brought it home to her mate and daughter, who had knowledge of such things, they were disquieted and muttered to one another. Already they had seen forebodings elsewhere. A cow gave birth to a calf without a head. One day the earth shuddered and boomed underfoot. One night the full moon was the hue of clotting blood. “Seek word from the drow,” Vagnhöfdi told Hardgreip. “You are better at a graveside than I am.”

  She hung back for a heartbeat or two, then her mouth stiffened and she agreed. Having packed food to take along, she set forth at dawn. Hadding had boasted he would go too, and she said low that she would be glad of any fellowship.

  On open ground he could not keep up with her strides unless he ran, but later they went through trackless, tangled brush, thorn and withe and twisty boughs knitted together like ringmail, with fallen logs and scummy green pools in among them. Even more than he must she push, squirm, fight her way step by step. Fog swirled and dripped. Snakes slithered, frogs croaked, carrion crows jeered in the offing. Where shadows lay thickest, Hadding saw rotten wood glow blue. At night he lay close against the warm, breathing bulk of the giantess. They were too weary to speak much.

  Toward sunset of the third day they came to a knoll on which stood a dolmen raised by folk unknown and long gone. The earth had fallen away from its great stones. Spotted with moss and lichen, they reared stark out of crowding willow scrub. “Keep well back of me,” Hardgreip warned Hadding. “Whatever happens, do not get close.”

  Thus he followed little of what she did in the twilight and heard merely snatches of what she sang. When full night had fallen, starless, moonless, and sightless, high flames shot up. He saw her black against their icy white. The dolmen groaned. Something trod out of it to stand before her. She cried her wish aloud. Hadding could barely make out that a horrible whisper answered.

  The thing went back into its mold, the fire died away, and Hardgreip returned to him. “Let us be off,” she said in a thin voice. They pushed blind through thickets that lashed and tore at them, until they found a stream and a cleanly rushing waterfall. There they stopped, toppling into a sleep full of nightmares.

  Afterward, on the way home, Hardgreip told him only, “I never awaited a good word from the drow, nor did I get any. I do not well understand what he did say, and do not think my father will either. But he spoke of dooms to come upon us.” She gave him a long look. “And he said you are not what you seem, Hadding, and your lot is still more strange. I know not what that means.”

  Shaken, he kept silent.

  Later, though, as they regained their own woods, the darkness lifted from their breasts. “Well, I knew already that no one, man or thurs or god, lives forever, nor the worlds themselves,” she said, “and whatever our weird may be, we shall not meet it this year.” For his part, when they reached his beloved lake he drew strength and cheer from the beholding, and wondered more keenly than ever when he could go find the sea.

  These jotuns were, indeed, wonted to magic. They were not deeply learned in it, but they could cast spells of some power for help, harm, or the searching out of what was hidden. They tried to teach Hadding. He showed no gift for it, and what must be done was too often loathsome to him.

  “As you wish.” Vagnhöfdi sighed, like a wind through tall pines. “The craft is tricky enough for those who have skill, so best if you leave it be. I will show you a bit, however. In time you’ll go from us, and we know now you’ll fare on wild ways. Let me give you the words that will bring me to your side, though you be halfway across Midgard. Use them in your direst need, for only once can I come to you thus.”

  Aside from that, Hadding picked up no more than loose-floating scraps of witchy knowledge
. He might cast runes for guidance or carve them for luck, he might take warning from a happenstance that struck others merely as odd, but he never became a warlock.

  Maybe this was Braki’s doing. Faithful to the son of his dead king, the chieftain and a few yeomen went two or three times each year to the giants’ dwelling to spend days with Hadding. From him the boy heard about men and their ways, their whole world beyond these wilds, what had gone on in it aforetime and what was going on now. Braki told him about the gods and the uneasiness between them and the jotuns; Vagnhöfdi liked not to hear such talk. Braki said that the high runic magic was one thing but the seething of witch-brews and calling on the underworld was an ugly other.

  First and foremost did Braki make clear to Hadding who he was, how he came to be here, what he had lost that was his by right of blood and what burden of revenge that blood laid upon him. The chieftain brought weapons along, gave them to Hadding, and drilled him ruthlessly in their use and in war-craft.

  He knew no humans but these. Their guestings were seldom and short. Yet ever more as he neared manhood he yearned for the life that was theirs and his, home fires, farings, friendship, women, offspring, towns, riches, ships, and lands new to him lying across the sea, the sea.

  He was the son of Gram. His father lay unavenged while he, who should be king of the Danes, hunkered in the house of a backwoods thurs, set snares for beaver, and raided birds’ nests for eggs. More and more he brooded on it, alone afar in the wilderness or under stormy skies on bare hillcrests. More and more of his time went to work with sword and shield, hewing at foes he raised up in his mind.

  Then Braki brought woeful news. Gudorm, Hadding’s half brother whom he did not remember, was slain.