War of the Gods

by Poul Anderson

  Men thought that belike Gudorm’s mother, Gro, had always secretly egged him on against her husband, Svipdag. Lately the tale went among them that after she died her ghost came and told him to take arms. Be that as it may, he did. Riding around Denmark from Thing to Thing, he got himself hailed king at those meetings and called warriors to follow him. But Svipdag was too quick. He brought a mighty host down from Svithjod, and Gudorm fell on the battlefield.

  Hadding raged. Braki told him he could do nothing yet and must abide a while longer. When the chieftain had gone home, Hadding grew curt and sullen. Vagnhöfdi and Haflidi bore with it. Hardgreip tried to draw him out, failed, and watched him with a sorrow that slowly became something else.

  In spring, after a hard winter, men rode again to the house. They did not linger and Braki was not among them. The chieftain had fallen sick during the bitter weather, had tossed abed fevered and coughing, and then gone down hell-road. They had laid him out with his weapons and heaped a barrow over him.

  Hadding left the house. He was away for three days and nights. The bond that had held him there was broken.

  VI

  He came back toward evening, halted in the open doorway, and stood while his sight wonted itself to the gloom within.

  The three thursir sat eating. Even cross-legged on the floor, they loomed higher than he, shadowy bulks, fleeting glitter off eyes and teeth. Smoke from a low fire drifted about them. Its sharpness mingled with smells from the cowstalls at the rear. After the woodland, that was a thick air to breathe.

  “Welcome back,” rumbled Vagnhöfdi, and “Are you hungry?” asked Halflidi. Hardgreip sighed.

  “No, I have fed today on my kill,” Hadding said, “but I will drink farewell with you, for tomorrow I go home.”

  “What?” cried Hardgreip. “Here is your home!”

  He shook his head. “Denmark is mine. Too long have I been away. Too long has my father’s foeman been alive.”

  “If you go against him alone,” said Vagnhöfdi, “it’s not he who’ll fall. Are you a berserker, to howl and slash at a throng of men till they cut you down?”

  “You promised you’d fight at my side.”

  Now it was the giant’s shaggy head that shook. “Once do I dare do that, but no more. If they knew a jotun was warring in their world, they’d call on the gods, and Thor would soon be there. I have no shield to stop his hammer.”

  “I am a Skjoldung,” said Hadding, “kin to the gods.”

  “And a tricky lot they are,” Vagnhöfdi growled. “Stay, lad, at least a few more days, and I’ll try to help you think.”

  “Oh, stay,” Hardgreip breathed. “Would you so coldly forsake those who love you?”

  Her look clung to him. Tall and broad-shouldered he stood, lithe and strong, in a huntsman’s green wadmal kirtle and breeks, knife at belt, spear in hand, bow and quiver slung on his back. The light streamed in to make molten gold of the hair that fell from a headband to his collarbones. As yet he had no real beard, but down of the same hue glowed on cheeks and chin and above the firm-set lips. His nose was straight, his eyes glacier blue, his voice rolling full out of the deep chest.

  She saw a slight wavering on his face and said gladly, “I know you’re not heartless and thankless.”

  Hadding sighed. “Well, if you want it so much, I will stay those few days, but no longer. I will not. I cannot.”

  “Yes, I feel that,” Vagnhöfdi said heavily. “You are whatever it is you are, and no man may flee his weird.”

  “But come in, do,” Haflidi bade, “and we’ll be merry together this evening as of old.”

  That did not happen. They drank, they talked of small things and their former days, but Hadding grew fiery and Vagnhöfdi more glum. Hardgreip alone kept trying for lightness.

  But when Hadding and Haflidi had lain down to rest, he made out through the darkness that Hardgreip drew her father aside and whispered with him.

  In the morning after they had broken their fast she smiled down at Hadding and said, “Shall we take this day free, you and I? Let’s seek out places we like and enjoy them anew” He thought she hoped it would lessen his eagerness to be off. Nothing could do that, but meanwhile he was willing to take some ease. There would soon be little of it for him.

  They walked off together, she matching her stride to his, from the house on the hilltop into the woodland beneath. The day was mild and bright, a few clouds catching the sunshine aloft, a breeze sweet with young grass, new-budded leaves, and the earliest flowers. Trees made a rustling roof over the game trail they took, through which light fell in shafts and flecks amidst the shade. A squirrel ran up a bole, a ruddy streak quickly gone in the green and gold above. Birdsong trilled.

  “Yes, this land is fair, and I will ever remember it,” Hadding said.

  “Is that all you will do, remember?” Hardgreip asked. Looking up, he saw a glint of tears on the great face. Their eyes met, turning at once away, and both of them flushed.

  After a while they came to an opening. Here rocks heaved up, thickly mossed, to hold off the beeches that ringed them in. A spring gurgled and glittered among them. It made a shallow pool from which a streamlet purled off. One bank of the pool was free of boulders, blanketed with the same moss, soft and springy.

  The day was growing warm. It baked rich smells out of the ground, smells of the life everywhere swelling and begetting, drunk with lustiness.

  “Ah, I know this spot,” Hadding mumbled into the silence.

  “Well you might,” Hardgreip said, “as often as you’ve watched me here.”

  Suddenly she grasped his arm. Her hand was huge and hot, he felt the blood throb in it, but the grip was tender. Astonished, he looked again into her eyes. They shone upon him like the sun.

  “Hadding,” she gasped, “don’t go away. Stay. Take me, have me. Now!”

  “What?” he blurted, staggered.

  “Make me your first woman, take me in your arms, me who took you in mine when you were new-born, me at whose breasts you drank, who kept you alive. Give back what I gave you!”

  He stared, bewildered. She let go of him and withdrew by one of her long paces. Still he saw her towering, clad merely in a shift, her bare feet catching at the earth and her arms raised high above the tousled black hair. She broke into a chant.

  Why and for what have you whiled away

  Your life all alone, this length of years?

  Your wish is for war, you want naught else.

  No loveliness lures; you’ve left it aside,

  Willful and wanton and wild as you are.

  You’ve hardened your heart against happiness,

  You seek but to slake your sword in blood,

  Never to know a night at peace,

  Bedding a bride who brings you joy.

  Grim are you grown, and gruesome your ways.

  Wrong have you wrought in your recklessness,

  Scathefully scorning and scoffing at love.

  Empty this anger out of your soul,

  Give now to goodwill and gladness a home,

  Be moody no more, but make me your bride!

  For I bore you, a bairn, at my breast one time.

  Remember my mothering, the milk I gave you,

  And how I held you and helped you thrive,

  Awake to keep watch on your welfare always.

  And he wanted her. With his whole being he did. Of late, when he woke at night to the growls and grunts, the thuds and thumps that meant the giants were coupling, it had been well-nigh more than he could beat His daydreams about Hardgreip flogged him into running for miles, plunging into icy waters, wolfishly hunting and slaying. Yet he had known they were hopeless, and today he could only stammer, “It cannot be. You, you are a jotun. I am a man. You are too big for me.”

  She threw back her head. Her laughter bellowed like the call of a cow elk in heat. “You are big enough, my love. Yes, I am a jotun, but I’m also a witch, and can be whatever I want and you want.”

  A new stave
rang out.

  Be fearless, youth, and follow in friendly wise to bed.

  Soon shall you see me shifting my shape to what you wish.

  Lengthening my limbs, or lessening my tallness,

  Ever do I alter in every way myself,

  My height as I would have it, to heaven raising me

  Up through the clouds where Thor goes on thunder-booming

  wheels.

  But next, if it be needful, back near to earth I draw

  My head that loomed on high, and humanlike I am.

  Featly I reforge me from form to form at once,

  Manifold the makings. It may be that I. go

  To littleness and lowness ere leaping forth anew

  In scope until I scan the sky around my brows.

  Now am I short and shrunken, then shoot aloft once more.

  Moonlike waxing, waning, I wear no sameness ever.

  If word you’ve had of werebears, you’ll wonder not at this.

  I dwindle in my dwelling to dwarf, who was a giant,

  Not firm, not fixed in sight, but fleeting hastily.

  I broaden the embrace I brought so close before.

  My girlish arms reach outward, but inward draw when huge.

  My being twines between the twain of great and small.

  To meet the strong I stand in stalwart mightiness,

  But slight I am and slender when sleeping with a man.

  As he gasped, she blurred to his sight. For a score of heartbeats he saw smokiness spinning and heard it whistle, like a whirlwind. Then Hardgreip stood again before him, tangle-haired, hard-breathing, but a woman, half a head less in height than he was. She laughed afresh, her voice now not deep but only low and husky. She pulled off her gown and spread her arms wide. Sweat gleamed on her breasts and belly. The smell of it overwhelmed him. He came to her and they enfolded one another. Her lips and tongue thrust at his. Her hands groped at his clothes. He scrambled out of them. She pulled him to the ground and bestrode him.

  VII

  Yet after a sennight Hadding said that now he would go. “From us, who raised you to manhood?” Vagnhöfdi asked.

  “From me, who made a man of you?” Hardgreip laid to that.

  Hadding’s back stiffened. “I would be less than a man did I abide when my father and brother lie unavenged and he who slew them sits in the high seat of the Skjoldungs.”

  “My hope for aught else was faint,” Vagnhöfdi said, “and I cannot foretell what will come of it, but this I know, that something beyond the world of men is at work here.”

  Nor was Hardgreip truly surprised. She and Hadding had talked in between tumblings. “You shall not go slime,” she told him.

  Vagnhöfdi looked at her. The blood beat high in her face. “This is not unawaited either,” he said, “but for you, such a trek can have no good ending.”

  “Would you rather I stayed behind?” she answered shamelessly. “My longing would set the woodland afire.”

  Hadding reddened too and his eyes flickered elsewhere, but he said nothing against it. He could use such a waymate, both for pleasure and for the jotun might she could wield at need.

  “Then this evening we will drink farewell,” Vagnhöfdi said, while Haflidi wept like a melting glacier. Hardgreip frowned at her mother and thereafter gave all her heed to her lover. As the mead cups passed around, they two became the merry ones.

  At dawn the four of them woke and the twain made ready. Hardgreip dressed like a man, in some of the clothes Braki had brought for Hadding over the years. She also took a sword and spear from among the chieftain’s gifts, now that she was going about in human size. She bore the food and the other gear, for besides weapons such as hers, Hadding slung on his back a shield, helmet, byrnie, and underpadding, as well as bow and arrows. Vagnhöfdi gave him a purse of gold and silver to hang beside his knife.

  “I shall not see my daughter again,” the giant said, “but this is her own will and doom. You and I may meet once more, fosterling.”

  The thursir stood outside their house and watched as the wanderers strode off down the hill. A last time Hadding and Hardgreip looked back and saw them huge against the sky. Then they were lost to sight behind the trees.

  The days of walking through wilderness went peacefully. At length the woods opened up on the rolling lowland of Scania and the path met a rutted road. A bit farther on this led to Yvangar. There Braki’s eldest son gave hospitality together with news of the outside world.

  “Svipdag holds most of Svithjod and has laid the Geats under scot,” he said, “though his grip is as yet uneasy and he must fight every year to quell uprisings. Thus he’s not much in Denmark, which has been quiet since Gudorm’s fall. But they’re restless there too. Harvests have been meager and folk mutter that this is for lack of the rightful king.”

  “I am he!” cried Hadding.

  “By birth, yes, or so my father always held. Still, you’d better go slowly and warily till you’ve gathered a strong following. How you may do that, I can’t guess, and I must say between us that your friend does not strike me as a lucky sort.”

  “We will go on anyhow and spy things out for ourselves,” Hadding said.

  First he made his host send word around the neighborhood of a feast he would give. He bought kine and pigs for it, but foremost a horse, which he slaughtered at Braki’s howe. Hardgreip dipped twigs in the blood and sprinkled it on the folk, then scattered the twigs and read the runes on them where they lay. “I see only a strangeness,” she said, “naught that I can understand.” ‘Even so, after the holy meat was cooked men ate heartily of it and spoke well of the dead man and his deeds. Hadding took that for a good enough sign, though mostly this had been his way of thanking the chieftain.

  Braki’s son gave him and Hardgreip horses, on which they rode away southward. Farmsteads yonder often lay far apart, with stretches of marsh or wildwood between. That night the wanderers must camp in the open. It was welcome. While Hardgreip was passing herself off as a youth, they could not bed together. “Foolishness,” she grumbled after their first bout, as they rested under the moon. “Why should anyone care what we do with ourselves?”

  “Braki taught me that such is the law of the Aesir,” Hadding answered. “Men must heed it lest those gods forsake them.”

  Her fist smote the earth. “Their law is not mine!”

  But he saw by the wan, shadowful light how she grew troubled. She shivered as if the chill of the dew that gleamed around them had seeped into her. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “There have been too many warnings and forebodings,” she mumbled. She turned to him and caught him tightly against her. “Make me forget it for this night.”

  Next day brought clouds, a wrack like smoke flying low. Rain-showers slashed. They made mud of a road that had become a mere track. It wound among fields gone back to weeds. Wind skirled through scattered hursts, tossing their leaves like beggars’ rags. Twice the wayfarers spied burnt-out farmsteads in the offing. War, a feud, or robbers from the hinterland had passed through here. Hadding and Hardgreip clutched their spears and spurred their horses onward.

  They were glad when, late in the day, they came on an untouched dwelling. It was poor: a small house and barn huddled under their turf roofs with no other home in sight. Plowland still lay bare. Meadow slanted rank down to the reeds along a mere. Behind that water gloomed more wild-wood. Lifetime by lifetime, men had been gnawing farms out of such wastes, felling and draining, but it was hard, slow work and they lived in fear of revengeful land-wights.

  Two hounds bounded forth, barking and growling. Hadding swung his spearshaft to drive them off. He gave Hardgreip the bow and quiver. “String this and nock an arrow, then stay mounted at my back,” he bade her. Braki had taught him that strangers were not always to be trusted. They rode to the door. He got down and knocked.

  A half-grown boy opened it. The ax in his hand would not help him much. Hadding smiled. “Greeting,” he said. “We are passersby who’d be happ
y if we got shelter for the night.” He leaned his spear against the wall to show he meant nothing worse.

  Oftenest folk at a garth made guests welcome. In return for food, drink, a place to sleep, maybe the loan of a woman if the householder felt so minded, they saw new faces, heard new voices, and got word of happenings elsewhere. Besides, it was a luck-bringing thing to do.

  This lad, however, only stood there in his shabby wadmal with drooping head. Streaks on the sooty skin showed where he had wiped his eyes. “Come in if you like,” he said dully, “but know that my father lies dead.”

  “Sad tidings,” Hadding answered. “We’ll not trouble you in your grief. Belike we can make do in your barn.”

  “No,” Hardgreip said from the saddle. Her voice shuddered. “Let us into the house.” Hadding looked over his shoulder and saw her sitting, taut as her bowstring, against the windy gray sky.

  The boy saw too. The sight overawed him. “Come under our roof,” he quavered. “I’ll take care of your horses.”

  Hardgreip close behind, Hadding trod into the single low room. A peat fire burning blue on the hearthstone gave I little warmth. More came from a few kine stalled at the far end, along with smells of them and their dung. He heard them stir, champ their feed, and breathe, but they were shadows to behold. A clay lamp and four rushlights sent flickerings through smoke and the murk that already hung thick. A roughly made bedstead stood at either wall. Otherwise there were only three stools, a wooden chest, and household tools. Food hung from the crossbeams, a haunch of meat above the fire. Withal, this was a well-kempt home, rushes on the floor, a stone-weighted loom in one corner.

  A woman met the newcomers. The braids of her hair shone yellow in the dimness, but toil had gnarled her hands and most of her teeth were gone. A toddler clung to her skirts. Two older children hung back, their eyeballs white in the gloom. “We cannot give you good guesting, but a bite to eat and a place to lie down you may have,” she said, as wearily as her son. “I am Gerd, the housewife here. This day my man Skuli Svertingsson died. Tomorrow we’ll bury him as best we can.”