War of the Gods

by Poul Anderson

  The other looked his way but stayed on the edge of the bluff. Nearing, Hadding made out that he was very tall, lean but wide-shouldered. Under a long blue cloak that flapped in the wind were goodly clothes. A wide-brimmed hat shadowed his face. From beneath it streamed long hair and beard, wolf gray. His only weapon that Hadding could see was a spear, of length befitting his height, the head blindingly agleam in the level sunlight.

  “Hail,” he called back through the shrilling air. His voice was as deep as the voice of the sea. “I have been awaiting you.”

  Astonished, Hadding came nigh. When he halted, he looked upward into a gaunt face where the left eyelids were closed above a hollowness. The right eye glared ice blue and winter cold. Hadding could barely meet it. Awe came upon him and his own spear sank in his hand.

  He felt somehow that it would be unwise to hide any of the truth from this man. “I am Hadding Gramsson, faring by myself,” he said low.

  “That name belonged to a son of the former Dane-king,” said the other.

  Hadding straightened. “I am he. I seek what is rightfully mine and revenge for the wrongs done my kin.” Surely he did best to go boldly forward. “May I ask who you are?”

  “I now bear the name Gangleri. At times I have been a ferryman.” More the old one did not say about himself. The name might well not be what his father gave him; it meant Wanderer.

  “You tread wild ways, Hadding,” he went on. “How shall you, single-handed, win your kingdom?”

  “I must find that out,” said the young man.

  The gray head nodded. “The heart of your forebears is in you. I will give help.”

  The sun was almost down. Its light blazed over the sea. The wind blew louder and colder. No more gulls were about, but two ravens flew from the woods and wheeled past before winging off again.

  Eeriness chilled Hadding. “Why would you do this?” he asked.

  “I like brave men,” said Gangleri. “And while I often fare alone, I am never forlorn, for I know more than most. You will do well to follow my redes.”

  This must be a wizard, Hadding thought. His life with the giants had somewhat wonted him to magic. After what happened of late, he misliked it. His thews tightened.

  Gangleri read it on him and said, “There is the low lore and there is the high. Shun the first, honor the other. But it does not behoove a warrior to be afraid of either.”

  At that, pride lifted in Hadding and he answered, “I will hear you out.”

  A bleak smile stirred beneath the shadowing hat. “It begins in worldly enough wise, my friend. To win what is yours, you need followers. This means a renown that will make men rally around you and the wealth whereby to reward them. Well, not far hence a band makes ready to fare overseas in viking.” Gangleri pointed east. Hadding saw what he had not heeded earlier, smoke blowing raggedly from beyond a tree-grown ridge. “I have come among them these past few days and made myself known as a soothsayer and healer. They will take you in on my word. Thereafter it is for you to show what stuff is in you.”

  Overwhelmed, Hadding stammered, “I have nothing to give you for this but my thanks. When I come into my own, you shall not lack for gifts.”

  “I hope for another repayment than gold,” said Gangleri. “Let us be off, to get there before dark.”

  He set forth with such long strides that Hadding could barely keep up and had no breath to spare for talk. The sun sank behind them but the sky was still light when they topped the ridge and saw the viking camp.

  Hadding forgot all doubt and dread. The ships before him were too beautiful.

  They lay grounded along an inlet, clinker-built galleys, narrow of beam, sweetly curving upward fore and aft. Some had decks at the ends, others were wholly open. Sternposts were finely shaped and graven. A stempost might also be, or it might be left short and straight for the mounting of a figurehead. A steering oar was set at every starboard flank. Rowing oars were racked on trestles together with mast and yard. Paint livened the hulls, red, yellow, blue, green black with trim of white or gold. Greater and lesser together, they numbered nearly a score. To Hadding it was as if already they strained to be off.

  Men swarmed over the grass, among leather tents and campfires. Banners on poles flew above flashing metal and loud merriment. “You come none too soon,” Gangleri told Hadding. “The last crew they were waiting for has arrived this day.”

  He led the way down to them and through their midst. All who saw him fell quiet as he passed. Hadding could understand why. Uncanniness enwrapped Gangleri like his cloak and shone like sea fire in his one eye.

  They halted before a big man who stood outside a tent beneath a banner on which galloped an embroidered red horse. He was roughly clad in wadmal and short leather coat. His ruddy hair was getting thin on top and a scar puckered his mouth. Yet the warriors around him listened closely when he spoke and said nothing against his words. A side of beef roasted on a shaft above their fire. The smell of it made Hadding’s belly growl.

  “Be welcome back, Gangleri,” the lordling greeted. “Who is this you bring along?”

  “A man for you,” the old one told him. “Hadding, meet Lysir Eyvindsson, chieftain in Bralund, who has gathered this fleet, and leads it.”

  Lysir frowned. “We’ve crew enough, without an untried youth,” he said.

  “Your name will outlive you if you take him,” Gangleri answered. “Men will never forget that it was you with whom he first sailed. Here is Hadding, son of the Dane-king Gram.”

  Amazed oaths crashed from lips. “Mighty tidings, if true,” Lysir blurted. Gangleri gave him a look and he went on hastily, “Of course it’s so when you’ve said it. But I thought the child must have died long ago. How many even remember he ever lived?”

  Hadding overcame what shyness he had felt and stepped forward. “Mine is a strange tale, yes,” he owned. “But I’ve been told I’m much like my father in both soul and skin. Who among you knew him?”

  “I fared with him to war, year after year,” said an aging man shakily. “I was there when he fell before Svipdag’s Norse and Saxons. Yes, now it’s as though he stood again before me, young.”

  “I saw Queen Signy on a trading voyage I made,” said another man. “She had wedded the king of Dynaborg in Gardariki. A kinsman of his later overthrew him, and I hear she killed herself rather than give up her standing as she had done aforetime or go in the bed of her husband’s slayer as Queen Gro did. It seems me that something of her shows in you.”

  “Be welcome, then!” roared Lysir “Ale! We’ll drink to the Skjoldung!”

  Men heard and came over. Soon the whole viking host was aseethe. A great feasting began, horns hoisted freely. By leaping firelight, which touched smoke with a hue of blood, Hadding stood forth against the dark and told what had befallen him. Waves rushed and beat under his words.

  “This is no small thing,” said Lysir at the end. “King Svipdag will not be glad when he hears of it.”

  Gangleri’s eye gleamed from below his hat as the old one stood offside among shadows, leaning on his spear. “Do you fear his anger?” he asked.

  Lysir shook his head fiercely. “Thor thunder me if I do! Too long has he laid too heavy a scot on us Danes, and meanwhile our farms and fisheries give niggard yields—maybe worst here in Scania, where we’re closer to him in his Uppsala.”

  “More folk than Danes bear him ill will,” said a skipper. Swedes and Geats had come to this meeting place too. “But he’s a mighty lord, as Jarl Gudorm learned.”

  “Either you crawl before him and cast Hadding out,” Gangleri told them sternly, “or you plight yourselves to the son of Gram.”

  Lysir nodded. “We’ll talk about that in the morning,” he said. “First, let’s drink once more to the gods. May they send us wisdom—and luck, which is better.”

  Men woke late and agreed they should let their heads clear before they decided. Thus the fleet stayed aground through that day and night. In the afternoon the vikings gathered. Not a
ll were eager to risk King Svipdag’s wrath. However, none wanted to go home at once. Nor need they swear any oath, except that they would take Hadding as one of themselves while on this voyage.

  Lysir went further. Not only did he give the young man a full outfit of clothes and gear, he swore brotherhood with him. They two gashed their arms and each let his blood fall into the footprints of the other.

  This laid a bond on the men from the chieftain’s household. No few of the vikings then cried that they too would take up weapons for Hadding, should he ever call on them. If he won, great honor and riches would be theirs. If he lost, belike they would die, but so everybody must. All that lasts is the fame a man leaves behind him.

  Gangleri stood tall and watchful. Only afterward did it come to them that when he promised Lysir a name that would outlive him, he had not said that the chieftain himself would be much longer on earth.

  At eventide Lysir told Hadding what they were after. Eastward over sea were the low shores of Kurland. It was a land of woods, fens, and deep river dales, broken by the farms and thorps of its Wendish dwellers. Man for man the Kurs were tough, but they had less skill in smithcraft and warcraft than did speakers of the Northern tongue. Hence vikings were wont to raid them for thralls, or else wring from them a scot of the furs that were their only other wealth.

  Lately, though, a king had arisen among them, hight Loker, who by war and wiles brought many of their clans under his sway. Thus he could raise a host to reckon with. He had also hired a band of warriors from across the water. These Danes, Swedes, and Geats were not merely his bodyguard, they led and stiffened the Kurland levies in battle. More than one viking crew had since come to grief.

  “My brother died there three years ago,” Lysir said. “To avenge him I’ve gone widely about, getting men to join me here in a bigger fleet than erstwhile” He grinned. “When we’ve broken Loker we’ll sack his burgh. I hear he has stored up a hoard ‘ of gold like a dragon’s.”

  Hadding thought that with his share of the loot he could begin gathering men for his own revenge.

  At dawn the sailors busked themselves to go. While, wading and shouting, they launched their ships, Hadding bade Gangleri farewell and thanked him for his help. “We will meet again before long,” said the old one “By then you will have leafed something.” As they left, he stood watching them till he was lost to their sight. The last they saw of him was the gleam of his spearhead. Two ravens flew high above.

  Sweeps creaked in row-holes, driving the ships outward. Aboard his, Lysir unwrapped a carved and painted dragon head. He left it off near friendly shores, lest it anger the land-wights, but now he set it up to snarl at the prow. Thereafter he put Hadding at the helm and showed him how to steer.

  Likewise did Hadding take his turns bending his back and tautening his thews to the oar stroke. He won to knowledge of knots and rigging, the care of a craft, the ways of doing things, the signs by which to set a course. There was time for this and more, because the crossing was not as short and easy as hoped. Clouds boiled up from the worldrim and over the sky; wind drove a lash of rain and spindrift; waves ran huge, gray and green and thunderous, beneath a storm-howl so loud that men could barely hear each other bellow and a cold that smote to the bone. Those who did not bail were at the oars, striving to keep the bow headed into the seas. Drenched, their hands blistered where calluses had worn away, skin cracked and stinging from salt, numb with weariness, they fought on.

  Well northward were they driven, to claw off the lee shore of Gotland, before the storm waned. After that a fog rolled in. That dripping, silent blindness was in its way still more fearsome. When at last it lifted, the fleet was scattered.

  Dauntless, Lysir spent days cruising to and fro in search. By ones and twos and threes he found the other ships. Mild weather cheered the crews. They raised masts to let the wind work for them. When it was not fair, they poled out the sails and tacked across it.

  All these skills did Hadding gain, wonderfully fast. “It’s as though you recall what you were born knowing but had forgotten,” Lysir murmured, “and as if our woes came on us for you to do so the sooner.”

  Hadding reddened with pride. The swing and throb under his feet, the reach of sight across restless mightiness, tang of salt and pitch and sunlight, whistling wind and rushing water, the ship like a living thing, like a woman clasping him, they were his; here he belonged.

  The vikings had suffered no wreck, which seemed to them to bode well, but some hulls needed work and everyone needed quiet, uncrowded sleep. They sought back to Gotland and went ashore. Folk who saw them coming fled inland. Lysir’s men did not give chase, nor sack the steadings thereabouts. This island paid scot to the Swede-king, and though he was now Svipdag, that might change someday. Best not to make bitter foes needlessly. They contented themselves with rounding up what kine they found and holding a strand-hewing. The meat tasted good after nothing but stockfish and sodden flatbread. They filled their water casks, fixed their ships, dried themselves out, and put to sea anew.

  And thus they came to Kurland. They made landfall south of the gulf that Lysir sought and bore along the coast until they found it. Far across the land, the smoke of watchfires. lifted. “That is as well,” said Lysir. “To do more than strike and run, we must meet Loker. The earlier the better. We’re late as is—not much time for plundering after the fight, if we’re to be home for harvest.”

  They dragged their keels onto a sandy beach well within the gulf. On their left, farmland stretched green, a stockaded hamlet in the offing. All dwellers had gone inside with their livestock. Doubtless a man or two had galloped away to tell the king. On the right, thick with undergrowth, a wildwood loomed, farther than eye could follow. “I chose this landing because of that,” Lysir told Hadding. “Ii we stand in front of it, the foe can’t outflank us.” The young man took the fore-thoughtfulness to heart.

  Lysir likewise held his crews back from trying to take the stronghold. “We’d spend lives for scant gain,” he said. “Once we’ve beaten Loker, we’ll grab it off readily enough, and everything else we want.”

  Still, they grumbled, and quarrels flared in the three dreary days afterward. “This too is part of warcraft,” Lysir taught Hadding: “how to wait.”

  Then at last iron blinked, horns dunted, feet and hoofs thudded, shouts rang raw, as the Wendish host arrived. It stopped a ways off, hundreds of men. A few leaders went on horseback, banners afloat overhead, and at the middle were ranked a few score in helmets and byrnies like the riders, the king’s Northern troopers. Otherwise the newcomers were tribesmen. Some of them had kettle hats and might wear a leather coat besewn with iron rings, but most owned merely cap, breastplate, and leggings of boiled hide, and maybe a shield. Their weapons were axes, spears, knives, and clubs that might or might not have stone heads. Such short bows as the vikings saw among them were better fitted for hunting than battle, and none of them was a slinger. Though outnumbered, Lysir’s folk bragged that what lay ahead would be more a reaping than a fight.

  First, while men growled and glared across the ground between and shifted bristling from foot to foot, he sent one forward bearing a white shield and his word. The vikings would go peacefully home on payment of ten marks of gold to each and a hundred to himself, or the value in furs and thralls.

  Loker spat and ordered the man back. As he left, the king flung a spear after him, soaring over his head.

  “He learned that from his Northmen,” Lysir muttered. “It means he’ll slaughter us all for the gods.”

  Hadding gulped. “It’ll go the other way,” he answered. He heard his voice waver. Anger at that burned unsureness out of him.

  “We’ll try for it,” said Lysir, “though no man shuns his weird.”

  He raised the horn slung at his shoulder and blew the battle call. A yell tore from both sides. In a ragged wave, the Kurlanders sped against the vikings.

  A guardsman came at Hadding, armed and armored like him. Hadding’s left hand tightened o
n the grip of his shield while he swung at his foe’s. The sword bit into the wood. The guardsman leered and twisted it. Almost, he wrenched Hadding’s blade loose. Too late, the youth remembered how Braki had warned him about that trick. His strength surged. Somehow he kept hold of his weapon, pulled it free, and clashed it against the other blade. For heartbeats the two men strained. For the first time Hadding looked into the eyes of someone he meant to kill and who meant to kill him. It was an eerie closeness, well-nigh like love.

  The swords slipped free and smote afresh. Hadding felt a blow on his shoulder as if from afar. Ringmail and the padding beneath stopped it. More swift than the older man, he saw an opening and struck for the leg. He felt steel bite into flesh and break bone. The warrior groaned and fell. His blood spouted wildly red. He writhed halfway up and chopped. Hadding knocked his blow aside and cut at his neck. More blood geysered. The man crumpled. He jerked once or twice and lay still, like a heap of rags. Through the reek of his own sweat Hadding caught a sharp stench as the deathling soiled himself.

  Another was in on him, and another. He gave blows, he took them, seldom knowing what came of it, for the maelstrom of strife bore him away. He pushed, tried to stand fast, slipped and barely recovered, hewed and blocked and hewed again. The breath gusted in and out of him through a throat gone dry as a stone in a fire. There was no time for rage; he was too busy staying alive. Yet always a part of him kept aside, aware, glad of each stroke he dealt or thwarted. He grinned as he fought.

  The tide swept him in among the Wends. Two he killed. Then a big, yellow-bearded man swung an ax at him. It batted his sword aside and split his shield. He would have lost that hand had the blow not torn the grip from him before the edge went deep. The axman roared. His hands slid apart along the helve of his weapon, to hold it at either end. Thus its hard, leather-wrapped wood turned Hadding’s blade. As the ax lifted, the wielder brought both hands toward the lower end. The head whirred down with his full might behind. It could have cloven helm or byrnie. Hadding sprang aside quickly enough. Before the man could raise his ax anew, Hadding leaped in and caught him across the brow. He reeled back, screaming, blinded with his blood and the skin hanging down. Hadding slew him.