War of the Gods

by Poul Anderson

  “With honor,” said Frodi.

  Hadding turned about. “We may as well go back.”

  The next day he bade goodbye and rode off with his guards. He reached the hall by Haven in the evening.

  That night, lying by himself in his shutbed, he had a dream.

  Once more he stood in skyless, blinding mists. They streamed by him on a wind he could not feel or heat Never had he been so alone.

  Out of the gray into his sight came Ragnhild striding. The wind fluttered her grave-clothes and tossed her unbound locks about her. Their red was the only hue in all the world.

  Her eyes gazed through him, a dead woman’s eyes, and he heard her as if from endlessly far away.

  Wild is the one you begot,

  Who bends to his will the beasts.

  Grim and hard his glance,

  Which well can tame a wolf.

  He could not cry out. He reached but could not lay his arms around her.

  She said:

  Watch that you ward your life.

  Foul is the bird you fathered,

  Ill as an owl her soul,

  Sweet as a swan her speech.

  He sat up in darkness and slept no longer that night.

  In the morning he sent for a soothsayer. The housefolk could hear how he forced himself. When the wizard came, the king took him into a loft room and closed the door. Afterward, as he gave him a coil of gold, Hadding said low, “Yes, I had my forebodings.”

  XXXI

  The home of Gudorm Thorleifsson lay in northwestern Zealand, a day’s ride from Haven. Broad and rich were his grainfields, grasslands, woods, ponds; herds and flocks, fish, and game abounded. Well over a score of free folk lived and worked there, carles, women, children. Even the dozen thralls were well fed and well treated.

  The house was long, stoutly timbered, turf-roofed. It and its outbuildings made three sides of a flagged yard. On the fourth side two barns flanked an opening with a gate for defense. Nearby clustered the lesser dwellings of hirelings, and farther off the huts of the thralls.

  Northward rose the wood closest by, a thick shaw of mingled oak, beech, elm, and hazel. At its edge, which axes had long since sharply marked off, stood the high barrow of Keldor, founder of steading and family. The household made him an offering at the time of each full moon, a sheaf, a fowl, a piglet, on the holy days a lamb or calf. Otherwise it was looked on as an eerie place and mostly shunned.

  Always the garth throbbed and shouted with life. From the milking at dawn to the stabling at dusk, they were busy cleaning, cooking, brewing, chopping, shearing, slaughtering, spinning, dyeing, weaving, nailing, forging, on and on, the tasks of every year and the tasks nobody had foreseen. Footfalls clattered, hoofs thudded, wheels creaked, hammers crashed, voices of human and beast went through smells of smoke, sweat, meat, hides, hay, dung, earth.

  The dwellers had their pleasures too. In between the bouts of heavy toil, and in snatches throughout those whiles, free time was not scant. Seldom did it go in dumb idleness. Tales, riddles, verses, songs, ring dances, races, wrestling and other matches, ball games, draught games, or getting drunk filled it well. A man might carve twining vines on a clothes chest, or he might go fishing. Lads and lasses wandered off by twos, to come back flushed and bright-eyed. When Gudorm’s fellows called on him, or he on them, trenchers were heaped, ale flowed, and the merriment could last for days. When merchants pitched their booths at the fjord some miles off, men were wont to bring their women along to the fair. And then there were all the small, quiet joys that one took for given. Denmark under Hadding was happy.

  Ulfhild was not.

  She had borne herself well at the wedding. As mistress of Keldorgard she was stern with underlings but did not shout or strike at them. However, they learned to beg forgiveness and jump to her bidding when her voice turned cold. Among the neighbors she was ladylike, often winsome. They told Gudorm she was as fair to behold as she was highborn. She quickly found how to gladden him in bed. At first he reckoned himself a lucky man.

  Thus it hurt him sorely when, month by month, she withdrew. Less and less did she talk to him about anything but the business of the household. More and more seldom did she give him back his kisses. When they had their first child, a healthy boy, she stood by at the namegiving, but never did she smile.

  He let his pain come forth at last, in the close darkness of the shutbed, as she lay unstirring at his side. “Has the blood frozen in you? Are you sick?”

  “Sick in my heart,” she answered.

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “That a king’s daughter is bound to a farmer.”

  “What? You knew what I was, you know what I am—a great landholder, formerly a guardsman of the king and now his reeve in this shire.”

  “Bathe as often as you will, I always smell what you are.”

  She gave him a few more bitter words and ended, “So shall our son be, and every child I bear you.”

  He shuddered. “I could hit you for that,” he said raggedly.

  “Do, and I leave you. You know the law. Nor will my father any longer be your friend. I’ll see to that.”

  Gudorm’s anger broke. “We, we were blithe together in his hall,” he stammered. “We sat in the same seat, we drank from the same beaker, you were with me more than with any other young man. How have you come to hate me?”

  She let his heart beat a while before she said, “Oh, I do not hate you. I only hate this lowliness. I want you to rise above it, to make yourself worthy of yourself.”

  “The king says he’ll raise me to jarl.”

  “When? He has as many now as he needs. They’d not take kindly to another, nor would you be of any use. In these dreary times of peace, none is likely to die soon and get out of the way. The king, though, he is old. And Frodi, who is to come after him, has slight liking for you and none for me.”

  “What, then?” rasped Gudorm. “Shall I go in viking? I might maybe find enough gold to glut your greed.”

  “No.” She rolled over to lie close against him. Her arms went across his breast. ‘I said I don’t want to lose you. I want the best for you, for us both and for our children. Think about it.”

  Soon, though, she had him setting thought aside for that night.

  She did not stop there. It was not that she nagged him. Rather, she worked slowly, a little at a time, month by month, year by year. She planted one seed in his mind, gave it sunshine and warmth by kindnesses toward him, watered it with thunderstorms of wrath, fended off the worms and crows of his doubts, let him harvest the fruit himself, and sowed two new seeds where it had been.

  “Even as Eyjolf ‘s fosterling, I wore silk on the high days,” she recalled. “Here it’s linen at best.” She made light of her furs and fine-spun wool.

  “We will plod through the same flat rounds till they bring us to our graves,” she said. “That’s if we are lucky. Come a blight, a murrain, an untimely hailstorm, and we’ll hunger. I’d bleed to hear our children cry for food we could not give them.”

  “We call ourselves strong,” she said. “But what do we rule over? A few thralls and hirelings, some head of livestock. We call ourselves free. But we are bound as fast as any of them.”

  “A great man sees beyond the rim of eyesight,” she said. “He makes of his life and his world what he will. In the minds of his men he stands higher, more beloved than their own fathers. Wealth flows into his hand, and he bestows it freely, so that all know his heart is as mighty as his arm. They flock to him from afar, with their gifts and tales and ventures. Skalds chant his praise. His name will live undying after him and his sons be thankful to him for what he wrought. You have the makings of a great man in you, Gudorm. I felt it when first I saw you. Let it not wither away!”

  Such things did she say to him, not once but again and again, in many different ways and words. In the beginning he told her she was wrong, overweening, a woman who could not understand the doings of men. She gave him answers soft or hard, mild or ic
y, as she deemed best, and never pressed him too long. She merely came back to it, and back, year by year.

  “I fear for us if Frodi becomes king,” she said when she was ready to. “He’s wild and wasteful. His heed is for nothing but himself. Ill will it go with Denmark. You and I may not yet be in the earth when the red cock crows here.”

  “He’s your brother!” cried Gudorm.

  Ulfhild smiled grimly. “Yes. Though we were raised apart, I know him well. The same blood runs in us both. But I am only a woman. I cannot do the harm he can.”

  “The king has chosen him. Hadding’s other sons have goodly holdings, high standings, naught to chafe at. And I hear he’s made them swear oaths not to rise against Frodi.”

  “Those men are not the only boughs on the tree of the Skjoldungs,” Ulfhild murmured.

  He gaped at her. She sighed, turned her head, and said no more about that for a span.

  But step by step she won him over to believing that he, even he, would be a far better king than Frodi. He was a young man, mettlesome, who often longed back to his days as a housecarle. Then he fared, feasted, and fought. They had been too few, those days. He felt as if his life were narrowing, dull little tasks among dull little folk. Ulfhild stoked the restlessness in him. Now and then they were guests at the king’s hall. Early on Gudorm brought home cheerful memories of those visits. Later he bore dreams that would not leave him in peace.

  “But it would be madness to try overthrowing Frodi,” he groaned one day.

  Ulfhild nodded. “Yes. However, what of forestalling him? Say he was abroad when Hadding dies. He is half the time anyway. A well-liked man with blood of Skj old in him, who won some fame as a warrior against the Jutes and Saxons, with Hadding’s own daughter to wife—if he trod boldly forward, he could make them hail him at enough Things that the rest would go along. Frodi would strike at him, but now Frodi would be the foe of the Danes, the outsider reaving our shores. Reckless as he is, he should soon fall in battle.”

  “The, the new king—he who’d be the new king—he’d have to have strong backing.”

  “Yes. It’s none too soon to start laying groundwork. Hadding is old. Who knows when something will take him off? A fall from his horse, a boar or bear he’s been hunting, a sudden storm as he crosses the Sound or sails among the islands, a sickness, an elfshot—who knows? For the sake of Denmark as well as ourselves and our sons, we should be taking forethought and quietly talking with men of weight.”

  “They’d look on such thoughts as faithlessness.”

  “I can tell you which of them will not, if you pick your words carefully. I’ve always kept my eyes and ears open.”

  Another year passed before she said to him, “It’s not as if Hadding himself were a good king.”

  They were walking alone at the end of a winter’s day. Thin snow crunched beneath their feet. A streak of cloud smoldered sullen where the sun had newly gone down, otherwise dusk deepened fast. Trees stood bare and black; the garth was a huddle of murk in the offing; closer loomed the grave-mound. Breath smoked white. A belated flight of crows cawed afar.

  “What do you mean?” burst from Gudorm. “He leads us, he wards us!”

  “Yes, as you lead and ward your kine. But I am thinking beyond that. Remember his life. He grew up among jotuns. He was the lover of his own foster mother. He dealt with witches, wizards, monsters, and who can say what other beings? Who can say he does not yet, to this very night? He slew a godling and fell under a curse for it. Has that ever really been lifted, or does it bide its time? He went down among the dead. He sails closer to the wind than any rightful skipper can. How much of him is human, how much is something else? Woe falls on a land whose king is wicked. Worse must befall a land whose king is a warlock or a troll.”

  “He’s your father,” Gudorm whispered.

  “I hate him.” Ulfhild’s voice shook. She stared straight before her into the gathering dark. “When he limps oft on hell-road, I will laugh aloud.”

  “What wrong has he done you?”

  “That I will never tell.” Nor did she ever. She left the words in his head like an adder’s egg.

  Meanwhile she fed his fears as she fed his dreams. In the fourth year he began riding widely around the kingdom. He needed no more than two or three followers, mainly for helpers. There were no robbers left. He gave out that he wanted to talk with men elsewhere about some undertakings he had in mind. Those he called on were those Ulfhild had named to him, and he spoke to them according to her redes.

  “Yes, as nearly as I can tell, if Hadding dies while Frodi is abroad, they’ll stand by me,” he said to her upon coming home from the last of these farings.

  “Then we should see to it that that is what happens,” she answered.

  “How?”

  “Think. We’ll take this up later.”

  They did at the barrow. Their fifth year together was waning. A wrack of clouds flew low above bare fields and sere grass, before a skirling, biting wind. The woods behind the howe roared with it. Dead leaves broke loose, whirled and rattled, fell on an earth that had gone cold.

  Ulfhild drew her cloak close around her. “Here we can be truthful,” she said from below her hood. “Your forebear the land-wight watches over us.”

  Gudorm knotted his fists. “Say on.”

  “It’s as if the gods do too. You know that, late though the season is, Frodi and his men have left for England and will winter there. I’ve asked some visitors from his neighborhood about it—they came by while you were away—and learned that it was shortly after his father had been to see him Knowing them, I think Hadding tried to curb Frodi, and only made him ireful. He’ll hardly return till the end of next summer, if then, as ravenous as he is. We’ll have time to make ready for him.”

  “How do we know Hadding won’t still be alive?”

  “We will make sure.”

  He had fought in his head with the horror. Now that she uttered it, he could only say, leadenly, “No. He is my king.”

  “Too long has he been. Whatever usefulness he ever had is gone from him. He squats in his seat like a toad while our hopes wither. If he wished to do well by his Danes, he’d at least lay down the kingship. But no, he’ll outlast us all, that barren troll, draining dry the land that should be yours and your sons’, unless we take from him what is ours.”

  “You’re berserk. Who but you would want to lift a spear against him? Who would dare?”

  “Yes, he is well guarded. But you recall that I got him to say he’ll come here when we ask, if he can. At the time, my thought was mostly to lull any doubts he might have gotten about us. Now—He’ll be by himself, unaware. One slash of a blade can set us free.”

  Gudorm staggered where he stood. “Murder? Under my own roof?” The wind howled with him.

  “No, not at your hand,” said Ulfhild swiftly. “Folk would indeed take that amiss. He has other foes.”

  Her eyes burned at him. “Hear me. I’ve been delving into the past, finding things out, holding my own secret meetings. Some forty years ago, thieves broke into the king’s treasure house. Its warden, one Glum, had been slack about keeping watch. Hadding hanged him for that, old and honorable though he was. A son of Glum’s had died a while earlier, soon after his wife, but left a son of his own, hight Styr, whom Glum was raising. Because of what the king did to his grandfather, Styr grew up poor, a worker for others wherever he could find work, never able to wed, his name besmirched, nothing left to him but hatred. The thought that he might avenge himself has kindled him as lightning kindles a parched woodland. Little he cares what becomes of him afterward.

  “I think his stroke will be more deft if he knows he can bolt out the door, and afterward meet somebody who’ll give him some silver and lead him to someplace where he’s not known.” She grinned. “That somebody may, instead, kill him. Or he may be cut down straightway after the deed. We can think about that. What matters is that Hadding will be dead.”

  “No,” croaked Gudorm. �
��No.” But already he knew she would win.

  XXXII

  That spring, on his way to the Skaw to lie in wait for Tosti, King Hadding had stopped at Keldorgard. “No, we’ll not need a levy for this,” he told Gudorm. “You’ll be of more use here, working your land and keeping my peace.”

  In the morning, before he left, Ulfhild drew him aside and asked if they could talk alone. They walked along the rail fence of a paddock where mists steamed off the dew that glistened on the young grass and cows stood rust-red above it, the sound of their cropping loud in the quietness. “Father,” she asked, “when will you come here again and abide a while?”

  Hadding shrugged. “How can I tell? If none of our outposts catches the illdoer, I mean to hunt for him as long as need be. And even if we take him soon, I’ve my rounds of the kingdom to make. There’s much for me to see to.”

  “But how seldom you see your kindred.”

  Her head drooped. He heard the sadness in her voice. “Do you want for something? Everything here looks well-off to me.”

  “I feel myself sundered from you, father.”

  He stopped in midstride. “Now that’s a surprise. Ever were you willful, Ulfhild. I thought you’d be happy to move to a home of your own.” After a bit he frowned and added slowly, “And of late Gudorm has somehow grown cold toward me. I know not why. But when we meet, his words are curt. I hear how he’s been riding around sounding men out about some.

  or other undertaking he has in mind. I’d be glad to give him counsel and help. Yet he, who brushed death at my side, tells me nothing.”

  “He feels restless, unfulfilled. And I-harking back, I begin to ken how much you’ve cared for me and how little thankful I was. Oh, father, we’ve many things to talk about. Say you’ll come! Not with a troop of warriors and lords. We’d never have freedom from their nearness Nor could we house and feed them. Come so we can sit together at the hearth, be together, as kinfolk should.”