Daughter of the Wind (14 page)

In most Norse settlements the most capable physicians were women. Sigrid, the jarl's wife, and Fastivi, Lidsmod's mother, with her long blond and silver hair, were Spjothof's wisest healers. Everyone knew the story of how Odin had tested Fastivi years before, taking on the shape of a bear and slaying her husband. The young mother had to kill the bear with a thrust from her husband's spear.

Some towns had medicine women who received barley flour or wool cloth for attending injuries, a full-wound fee if bandages and ointment were required, bone payment for the loss of a bone or joint. In most settlements, the individual who caused the wound was responsible for the cost. In Spjothof such medical help was given freely—the actual healing dependent on the mercy of the gods.

The jarl's wife accompanied Gauk to the threshold. She lingered there in the morning sun for all to see, letting the villagers recognize the respect she felt for him. The jarl and his wife had not hesitated to befriend Thorsten the berserker, although most of his other neighbors regarded him with great caution. Gauk was hopeful that the jarl's wife would acknowledge the new status his bear pelt implied, and offer him similar acceptance.

The usually talkative Sigrid was all but silent for the moment. Gauk, broken by what he had seen, could only offer his stammered, “The gods will not forget.”

“Odin remembers,” agreed the jarl's wife, laying a gentle hand on Gauk's arm.

Gauk flung a strong arm around Hego's shoulders.

“I thought of you and your whetstone out on the ice,” and the young hunter.

“Surely not,” Hego responded, blushing happily.

“You put such a fine edge on my blade, this one here,” said Gauk, “that I could skin a bear as easy as—” He made an airy gesture.

Then Hego withdrew, suddenly aware now of Gauk's bear fur garment, and the paws dangling from his belt. Even Hego, who gave little thought to his tunic or his leggings, could not misunderstand the stark implications of Gauk's bear garb.

“It's just me,” said Gauk in a tone of forced reassurance. “The same as ever—very nearly.”

Hego gave a nod of respect and uncertainty. Tufts of sheep's wool and a berry bramble were stuck to his sleeves, and his knees were muddy. “I spend my time tying and retying the knot around the sheep gate,” said Hego. “And counting the animals, while you have been off having high adventures.”

“You did battle with the Danes, from what I hear,” Gauk offered. “You and Head-Splitter will find your way into a poem yet.”

But Hego was quiet now, shrugging, not willing to compare his own fighting prowess with a berserker's.

“My new sword needs a better edge,” said Gauk. He hated the way he sounded just then, his tone gruff, complaining. “I won it from a seaman, and I suppose there's tar on it. The thing won't draw cleanly from the scabbard,” he added, sounding even worse.

Sea warriors often spoke in terse, wooden sentences, so manly they were above articulate speech. Gauk and Snorri had chuckled over this, but now Gauk's own voice had taken on the same self-serious tone.

“If you choose, I can knead oil into the leather,” said Hego, adopting the tone of helpful craftsman. “And cure the steel of any fault.”

Gauk gave a nod, but felt a chill in his heart. He wanted to drink hard with Hego, and sing. Gauk did not enjoy the look of awe in Hego's glance.

Gauk dined with his mother, telling her an abbreviated version of his nights under the North Star.

It was good to be home. But the walls seemed to have closed in. The place was smaller than before. Her boiled lamb was as flavorful as ever nonetheless. He ate his fill, and then consumed more. He ate like one of the great-bellied men of legend, men who could devour an entire heifer at one evening meal.

He was dazzled at his good fortune, to breathe his mother's hearth smoke after such days and nights of danger, but his mother's anxious questions and the way her fingers searched out the sword nick in his shoulder, where Skall's blade had tasted flesh, made him wish he had not caused her such anxiety.

“If you had been here,” she said, when she took away his empty wooden bowl at last, “you would have protected the jarl.”

“How?”

“I know you could outfight any Dane,” she said.

Gauk gave a laugh. “Danes use arrows and sling stones. In a sword fight, no doubt I'd have a good chance.”

“Sword to sword, no Dane would be your equal.”

His mother was not entirely blind. If she turned her head, and searched the light, there was a tiny remnant of vision, and she tried to find Gauk with her eyes now. He sat still, knowing that even when she glimpsed him he would be little more than a shadowy outline.

“Ara's son,” she said, “would have defended his village.”

“I certainly would have done my best.”

Her next words both chilled Gauk, and gave him a deep thrill.

“That's why Odin has chosen you—and made you bear-pelted. To bring us back our pride.”

Astrid's father, Horse-Trygg, met Gauk at the door to the family longhouse. In a breach of custom, he did not invite Gauk into the house.

Horse-Trygg was a well-known horse breeder, and so named to set him apart from Trygg Two-Nose, the warrior. The horseman walked Gauk up-slope to the horse pen of long black and white birch wood logs. Horse-Trygg was a small, stocky man, with a way of looking sideways as he spoke, cocking his head and emphasizing his slow speech.

He recounted a horse fight held earlier that summer, with heavy wagers on both sides. Gauk had witnessed the fight—the entire village had, but it was typical of Astrid's father to recount an event as though he had been the sole witness. Gorm, one of the horse owners, had cheated shamefully, wounding the opposing steed with a blade.

“It hurt my heart,” said Horse-Trygg with a sigh, “to see a fine little fighting horse disabled like that.”

Astrid's father held out a fistful of toasted barley, and his horses, frisky, short-legged creatures the color of soot on snow, nosed their way forward.

“I owe Astrid my thanks,” said Gauk, “for telling me so frankly what the Danes have done here.”

“Astrid is a clear-headed young woman,” said Horse-Trygg. While not a fighter, Horse-Trygg's success in breeding and training animals had given him a certain honor, and he spoke like a man who expected his words to carry weight.

“No other neighbor would tell me,” said Gauk.

“Bad luck,” said Horse-Trygg, caressing the nose of one of the horses, “clings to the mouth.”

“I want to speak further with Astrid,” said Gauk.

“Of course you do,” said Horse-Trygg. “All those days out on the ice and sea, and you want to look into a pair of blue eyes and tell your story.”

Something about the man's tone stung Gauk. “And I want to speak with you.”

“What about?” asked Horse-Trygg, not meeting Gauk's eyes.

“I'll have a bride price in my purse,” he said. “By the end of summer.”

“How will you get that, Gauk?” asked Horse-Trygg, digging into his feed pouch for more toasted grain.

“By the labor of my back,” said Gauk. “Planing logs and chopping wood.”

“Ah, Gauk,” said Horse-Trygg in a tone of regret—even sadness.

The horses chewed, their working jaws crunching the grain. Horse-Trygg massaged the ear of a young mare.

“I did, at one time,” Horse-Trygg continued, “think of you as a young man with years ahead of you. I always liked you. But now—”

He let his eyes linger over the bear belt fastened at Gauk's shoulder. Many men had a grudging admiration for the fighting reputation of the berserkers, while acknowledging that such men were little more than devotees of the sword, lacking in the quiet steadfastness respected among the Norse.

“Now,” said Astrid's father, “I am not so sure.”

Thirty

Hego's household ale was thick as soup, with a thick yellow head. He could consume the stuff by the cupful, but he was a little embarrassed to serve it to a visitor.

Gauk drained his drinking horn, a receptacle that had been made from the polished, sweeping horn of a great ox many years ago. The horn stood on little legs of a metal nearly as bright as silver. Hego's drinking horn had belonged to a distant uncle, a man who had traveled east as far as a land where archers rode horses backward and people played a game consisting of driving a goat's body from one end of a field to the other. The horn was far from being an object of dwarf craft, but it was the most expensive heirloom Hego owned.

Hego's ale was brewed by his servant Jofridr, who made a point of keeping the recipe secret. “My husband Rurik liked ale you could spoon out,” Jofridr was saying. “He said ale was like bread but better for the heart.”

Gauk had swallowed his share of the brew. He was perched on the edge of Hego's tool bench, among the shears and ax heads people had left for the blade smith to sharpen. Hego and Gauk agreed courteously with the long-dead shipmate, and lifted their cups to him.

Jofridr crossed her arms, cleaning rag folded and tucked in her apron. The evening was cold, and yet in here the fire was merry. “Rurik was a real man,” she said. “With warm blood and hot breath.”

“We all raise our cups once more to honor his memory,” said Hego, a polite phrase he knew was appropriate whenever the dead were mentioned by name. This could go on all night, the dead honored by ale drinking until no one could speak or stand.

“We have our memories of better times,” said Jofridr, tears in her eyes.

Sometimes Hego could not follow Jofridr's train of thought, and he wished he was not in such a dull-witted frame of mind. He had worked cow's foot oil into Gauk's sword sheath. Hego did not think much of the scabbard's leather work. Some squint-eyed craftsman had stitched the horse leather with awl and rawhide, and the result was a scabbard the blade slipped into with a difficulty matched only by the strength it took to wrest it free. It was much better now.

“My Rurik,” Jofridr continued, “was not like the half-men we have around the village today.”

“I'm sure not,” said Gauk, meeting Hego's eyes.

While women were never law speakers and female servants were relied upon for years of uncomplaining labor, it was not uncommon for these valued family retainers to have many worthy opinions.

“You hear what he says, Hego?” said Jofridr.

“What does he say?” Hego asked, weary affection in his voice.

“Your friend agrees that we are a town of spiritless men,” she said.

Sometimes conversation got Hego into trouble. This was why he liked the company of ewes and breed boars. “Yes, that's what we are,” said Hego, sure, even as he spoke, that agreeing with Jofridr was not a good idea.

“You see?” said Jofridr, stirring the hearth embers. “We all know it. Only a berserker has any courage in this town, and everyone knows a berserker is worse than a drunk.”

Cold are the counsels of women
. It was an old proverb.

Gauk climbed down from his perch on the workbench. He whisked the sword from its scabbard and replaced it, taking a fighting stance a few times to test the leather.

“So now you are ready for an enemy,” said Hego.

“If I ever set eyes on one,” Gauk agreed.

To Hego's surprise Jofridr burst into tears. “Who is to keep us alive in our beds,” she said, “with only fools to guard us? And which of you will be man enough to bring Hallgerd home?”

Hego could not sleep. Sometimes ale made him drowsy, other times it quickened his pulse and filled him with visions.

Jofridr was snoring. She had drunk her fill of her own ale, and when she spoke in her sleep she uttered names of the honored long dead.

Just as he was about to drift off, Hego heard something. The sound was far away, and very quiet.

Two booted feet stirred the pebbles of the shore. The mares were silent, and the breed ewes did not stir. If the Danes had come again, the animals would have sounded an alarm, and the recently posted sentries would have raised a cry.

Hego rose. The moon had risen, a splinter of blue light slipping under Hego's door. He found Head-Splitter beside his bed.

A keel makes an unmistakable grating noise, as it is guided over the rounded pebbles of the shore—even a small craft, shoved gently along, in an effort to muffle the sound.

It was dark.

The moans of the people still hurting from the Danish attack, and the soft murmurs of the people who attended them, were audible throughout Spjothof.

A few guards had been posted, noted Hego, but the veterans were set to guard the mountain passes. Only two sentries defended the fjord. Old Gizzur was slumped beside the wharf, asleep. A young boy, Thorfinn—son of an expert carver—gripped a spear, gazing out at the dark fjord.

Someone had run
Strider
out into the cold water, the disturbed water lapping faintly at the pebbles along the edge of the fjord. This obscure figure was busy in the prow of the boat.

Hego turned to the young sentry and put a finger to his lips.

Hego held Head-Splitter high, keeping the keen blade dry. He waded nearly all the way to the vessel before Gauk looked up from the provisions he was arranging and said, in a whisper that carried through the silence, “No!”

Hego hurried through the shockingly cold water.

Gauk continued to speak in whispers that echoed softly throughout the fjord. “Stay home, Hego!”

Hego covered the remaining distance, swimming with strong strokes, the battle-ax held clear of the water.

“If you come with me, you'll never see Spjothof again,” Gauk said, looking down over the side of the skip.

“I'll fight at your side, and die singing,” said Hego, treading water and shivering. It was an old phrase, taken from some half-remembered saga.

“I'm going to rescue Hallgerd,” said Gauk in a quiet, determined voice. “And if I can't, it doesn't matter. Who cares if a berserker lives or dies?”