Odin’s Child (32 page)

Rumble-Guts leaned close to me and growled in an urgent bass, “Hear the truth, heathen, and try to understand. Magic is of Satan—far be it from us. But when we possess the king's bones and good Bishop Grimkel, touching them, prays for our deliverance from the Danes, and Olaf himself pleads our cause at Heaven's Throne, how then will God refuse us?”

“Even C-c-canute,” added Stammer, “cannot prevail against God. In the Spring, when Grimkel can journey up country, we will unc-c-cover
the king's precious body in front of all. Then the false priest, Sigurd, and Alfifa and her brat will quake and c-c-cringe, and our jarls will take new c-c-courage, and we will throw the foreigners out.”

In my mind's eye I saw their faces—plain, rough faces, honest and earnest, like the face of farmer Thorgils or, for that matter, of Kalf Slender-Leg.

“We're wasting time,” Nose struck in. “Tell us where his body is and you can go your way.”

“No, friend, I'm a fool, but not a big enough one as to believe that. I'm a dead man as soon as I've told you what you want, and so I will tell you nothing. It's the end of your little scheme.”

“Oh,” replied Stammer softly, “n-not quite. Suppose you don't mind having p-pieces of flesh cut from your body. There are still the others—that c-cripple whose life you were so anxious to save, the old whore at the inn who c-coddles you. And remember that we know their faces, but you don't know ours. You can't protect them. We are not c-c-cruel men, but we mean to have our way.”

Oh, no, I thought, never say ‘cruel'—not when the cause is so noble! “Look, I don't know where your bloody Olaf is. It was dark, it was four months ago.” I fought down the fear that rose inside me and tried to think. “Maybe when the snow is gone …, yes, I could find him then. You won't want him until spring anyway. We'll look then.”

“And by that time,” sneered Nose, where will you and your friends be, eh? And maybe in the meantime you decide to tell the Danes, eh? We are shrewder men than that, my friend. No, just you show us the spot now and we will dig—enough to know that it
is
the spot. Then we'll cover him up again.”

“Dig in two feet of snow and the ground as hard as iron?”

“Nothing is impossible with God,” sounded Rumble-Guts' bass. “You can't have buried him deep.”

“All right, then but let's have more men to lighten the task. My crew—”

Nose laughed unpleasantly. “You underestimate us again. Your crew isn't worth discussing. Even among loyal Tronders, we've kept our business to ourselves. Men talk; their wives talk even more.”

“Now,” said Stammer. “Enough. We'll look for the k-king tonight. And this, my argumentative friend, is what you will do….”

When he had done talking, they untied my hands, dropped silently
over the side and scuttled away. In a moment, there was nothing to be heard but the shrilling of the wind and the crash of the sea on the desolate beach outside.

In a fury, I cursed Olaf and all his wretched countrymen, who had caused me nothing but sorrows since coming to this place. But cursing only made my head hurt worse, and I needed it clear. I let myself down from the gunnel and stumbled out into the gray morning.

Just outside the shed Stig caught me in his arms. Looking into his questioning face, I nearly told him all—but thought better of it and didn't. My crew would arm themselves to the teeth, bluster about the town, and accomplish nothing except to drive these pious assassins deeper into the shadows. And every day thereafter we would have to fear a quick knife thrust in the crowded street, an arrow through the open door, a torch tossed onto the roof at night. For I never doubted that they would carry out their threat to harm Kalf and Bergthora, who were the hostages for my good behavior. I put Stig off with some story about thieves ambushing me.

But, Odin All-Father, what was I going to do?

†

That night, when the moon rose, I mumbled an excuse for going out, and skied to a stand of pines that lay beyond the north wall of the town. After I had stood there for some minutes, my jaws rattling with cold, I heard a hiss of skis and saw three shadows glide out from the trees to surround me.

“I'm half frozen.”

“Just making sure you came alone,” Nose answered.

I peered at their faces in the moonlight. None had the features and bodies that I had given them: Noses's nose was nothing exceptional. Rumble-Guts turned out to be a slight, narrow-waisted man. And Stammer, as well as I could make him out, was one of the handsomest men I'd ever seen.

Without more conversation, we struck out, two abreast, through the silvery wood. My captors wore their swords slung on their backs, but on my back they had tied a heavy bundle of picks and spades, so that soon, despite the bitter cold, my shirt was soaked with sweat.

It was not exertion alone that raised this sweat on me. Since coming
to Norway, I had discovered that I suffer from a peculiar uneasiness in the deep woods. I know other Icelanders, too, who feel it. At home we grow up able to see for miles across our naked, wind-swept barrens, so that an Iceland child actually does not know what it means to be lost. The forest is alien to us; it hems us in, suffocates us like the fog at sea. I never willingly went into the woods. Of course, my preferences were not being consulted at the moment.

“How will you k-k-know the spot?” asked Stammer, running on his skis beside me.

“There's an excellent chance I
won't
know it. Somewhere along the bank of the fjord, about five miles from here is a blackened tree, not different from a thousand other black trees, except that it's lightning-struck and has one branch hanging over the water. That's the task you've set yourselves.”

“We'll f-f-find it,” was his determined answer.

We skied for a long time in silence, winding in and out of the pines and birches that grew down to the water's edge, keeping the fjord on our left, while to the right of us the ground rose gently to a line of distant hills. Somewhere in the space between, hidden beneath the snow, lay the icy ribbon of the Nid.

But nothing in this bleak landscape offered a sign.

We were working our way up a long stretch of rising ground, when Nose began to complain, “It's too far. He's taken us clean past Thorgils' land and he knows it. Devil skin him! He's leading us a chase.”

Stammer halted and the three of them stood around me, with angry looks. Their leader brought his ice-bearded face close to mine. “Are you tr-tr-tr-,” the word stuck in his teeth. He shook himself in vexation and squeezed it out, “tricking us?”

“For what possible reason?”

“You worship the demon, Odin, the Father of Lies. That's reason enough for you,” whined Nose, reaching back his hand to grasp the hilt of his sword. “I say we kill you now and go home—this was a fool's errand to begin with.” He took a menacing step towards me.

In the distance a wolf cried. No one in the forest hears that sound without shivering.

“Listen!” Nose again, his high-pitched twang sounding higher than before. “The brute's got our scent. The whole pack'll be on us soon.”

“Control yourself,” Rumble-Guts snapped.

But Nose was plainly frightened. “Kill him and leave him for the wolves. They won't chase running men where there's easier meat.”

“We need him, you i-imbecile!” said Stammer.

“Damn you all, I'll do it myself!” Nose took another step toward me with his sword upraised while I retreated so as to get Rumble-Guts between us. To the surprise of us all—I disappeared.

We were standing, without knowing it, on the brink of a deep hollow. I slid backwards, making windmills with my arms, until my skis flew out from under me and I hurtled down the slope in a spray of snow, sometimes head first, sometimes tail, and afraid I would meet my death in collision with a tree before my murderous companions had time to overtake me.

The tree did come first, catching me flush on the forehead and leaving me stunned.

On my face in the snow, with my legs sticking up at queer angles, I returned to my senses as Stammer and Nose resumed their argument over my fate—an argument which Nose seemed to be on the point of winning. Luckily, Rumble-Guts shouted just then, from a little ways away, to come and have a look at what he'd found.

“It's very like, isn't it?” I heard him say to them.

“Like enough. F-fetch him over here to see it.”

Nose came back for me, yanking me upright and setting me down hard on my legs, which, I am sure, he hoped were broken. We pushed through a thicket of branches down to the water's edge.

“W-W-Well?” Stammer asked, slapping his hand against a blasted trunk whose single crooked branch hung over the water.

I started to say that Yes, it did seem….

“It
is
the one,” he said with finality. God does not p-p-play jokes. So. And you will f-f-find our king.”

“I'll find him when I'm damned good and ready!” I'd had enough of being ordered about by these three. With slow deliberation I brushed the snow from my clothes, adjusted the bindings of my skis, and felt my various bumps and bruises while they watched impatiently. “All right,” I said at length, “follow me.”

Where we came to a ribbon of snow that divided the wood, I stopped and pointed to my feet.

“You're s-s-sure?” asked Stammer sharply.

“A few paces right or left, I can't remember. There's a stone over it about as big around as a plate.”

So Stammer and his friends began a slow march up and down the bank, stooping and thrusting their swords into the snow at every step. After a few minutes of this, Rumble-Guts' sword struck the stone. From the farther side of the stream—louder than before—the wolf howled again. Nose stifled a groan.

“Wants his dinner,” I remarked pleasantly.

“Just you get to work,” he spat out.

After some minutes' steady digging, we cleared a rectangle of three paces by two down to the sandy crust of the riverbank and rolled aside the stone marker.

“It is my fate,” I sighed, “to dig and un-dig this king.”

“How d-deep,” Stammer asked.

“Less than a foot.”

“Good. Pray first, comrades, and G-God will guide our hands.”

So they prayed, and God, it seemed, did.

Stammer pushed his spade into the ground, working the handle from side to side, prying the sandy soil away. Steel glinted dully in the moonlight—a patch of mailed coat.

“Gently,” urged Rumble-Guts. “God forbid that we injure this sacred flesh.”

Two more spadesful and the moon shone upon Olaf's face.

I squeaked with fright, I admit it, and jumped backward. My captors let go of their spades, dropped to their knees, and commenced to pray in earnest—all three of them stammering now, they were in such a state.

It is one thing to believe that the dead live in their tombs, another thing to see it. The face seemed longer and thinner, the flesh had sunk in around the bones, making dark hollows of the eye sockets and the cheeks, and the ruddy skin had paled to the color of old ivory. But it was Olaf's face—whole and uncorrupted, I will swear to it. To see him, he might have been asleep. And if asleep, dreaming bloody dreams—for even the moonlight could not soften that hard mouth and that jutting jaw.

It occurred to me later, when I had my wits again, that the sandy soil, the shallowness of the grave, and the hard frost that autumn might
have been enough to save him from decay. Who knows?

“See his beard,” whispered Nose. “Is it not longer than it was?”

“Aye, it is,” came Rumble-Guts' hushed reply. “He lives. He's only waiting.”

The wolf wail that sounded again seemed fitting music for this sight.

They crossed themselves and, unsheathing their swords, turned on me.

“Naturally, we c-c-can't l-let you leave.”

“Naturally.”

“Your friends will c-c-come to no harm.”

“Good of you to say so.”

“And now, we will slay you by his grave. A heathen's blood will g-gladden him.”

Yes, I agreed, I was sure it would.

“And leave your corpse for the wolves,” Nose laughed evilly, with a nervous glance into the dark.

“I will be missed.”

“Oh, but don't you have the same belief as Norwegians,” said Rumble-Guts, “about the Yulerei? The ghosts who roam the countryside in the month of Yule, carrying off folk who are foolish enough to go out alone at night? That is what your friends will think.”

A growl rattled in the throat of something very near. Where we looked, two luminous eyes shone in the dark. Nose let out a strangled scream and flung himself into the snow, churning it with his legs. His friends stood their ground for only a heartbeat longer. The Thing bounded forward, brushing me with its matted coat as it shot past. It caught them before they had gone a dozen steps, lifted them screaming one by one into the air, and cracked their backs on its knee.

Afterwards, it crouched over them, moving from one to another, making wet mouth sounds. Then, standing to its full height, the growl still in its throat, it's face smeared with blood, it started toward me.

For a swift instant I stood again on Stiklestad plain, paralyzed with fear. Does he know me? I had worried about that when I made my plan with him, but what choice did I have? The werewolf's steaming breath, sweet with blood, licked at my face. If I ran, he would kill me for sure. I stood, not moving a muscle, my eyes lowered in an animal's gesture of submission, and repeating, “Odin—Odin—Odin—” to myself, filling my
mind with the magic name. The creature's jaws gaped open, showing red teeth, he shook his huge head from side to side—and with an enormous yawn sank on his knees before me.

I let out my breath very slowly. “Wash your face in the snow, friend Glum,” I said, “and then lend me a hand with this lot.”