Odin’s Child (34 page)

He stood with tears shining in his eyes. There was a deep hush in the room.

“Kalf Slender-Leg,” I replied in a low voice, “what can I do but hate you? Why did you say to me things that no man can forgive—coward,
run-away, betrayer?”

He looked at me helplessly. “My reasons will make no sense to you. When you first decided to go to battle with me and Ogmund, I didn't want you to. I suspected your real reason. But then I thought it might be my last chance to save your soul, and so I agreed to it.

“All that night in Olaf's lean-to, I prayed for just one thing—not victory, not the restoration of the king—but for God to open your heart and make you a Christman. Only that. And by the first light of dawn, after so many hours of prayer, I believed it would come to pass. Then, out of nowhere you threw yourself on me, calling the king a monster and a lunatic, me an idiot. And I felt as if God had spit in my face. And you kept on and on, until, to make you stop, I said the cruelest thing I could think of.

“I knew then that you would have to stay and fight. We'll go to our death together, I thought, and together fly up to Heaven, to God's mead hall. For it seemed to me God must pardon you, if you died for him. But if you turned your back on Him this time, your soul would be lost forever.”

I shook my head in disbelief.

“It was a stupid and wicked thing I did. And to punish me, God has given me this.” He touched his shattered hip. “Every day of my life, I do penance for those words I spoke in a desperate moment. But I fear I will never earn God's forgiveness until I first earn yours. I don't deserve it but I do humbly ask for it.”

All those weary months of misery ended in an instant.

“Kalf, if only all the Christmen were as good as you!” I jumped up and embraced him, holding him tight to me. “I've never forgiven anyone for anything in my life, but I forgive you a thousand times over, and I beg the same of you. I accept your silver gratefully, and—wait!” A thought had just struck me. “All right, I accept your gift, but only on one condition—that you accept a gift from me. Come, lean on my arm and walk with me out to the yard where we can be private, for my gift is a deep secret.”

We spent a long time talking. The grass had grown high between us, as the saying goes. We cut it down. Not all of it, that could never be, but enough that when we came back to the house we were brothers again.

That night I slept peacefully.

†

Kalf's calculations were exact. The next day we brought our silver to Ake and weighed it out for him to the last ounce, and with enough to spare for awnings, a tent, and other gear that we would need for a summer's cruise.

Next, I set about recruiting. Having no word-fame or victory-luck to boast of, I made do with swagger, bluff, and the promise of generous shares. The Danes helped, too, by making life in Nidaros so unpleasant that I soon signed on twenty-nine new hands, some tough and experienced men among them. In just over a week I had my ship and my crew.

One night during that time I had a dream. It seemed to me that I stood on the edge of a towering cliff overlooking the sea, and so high up that my head touched the bowl of the sky. A wind blew, frothing the water below me and dashing it against the rocks. I wanted to cross the water but could see no way to do it in the teeth of that wind.

My father appeared beside me—my father, except that he was strangely clothed in shreds of deerskin and blue cloth that flapped in the wind like flags, and that he had but one eye. Touching me on the shoulder, he pointed to a dead tree, cleft by lighting, which I had not noticed before, and, tearing off a crooked branch, thrust it at me. In my hands the branch became a spear, and I understood in some fashion that this was Gungnir, the spear of Odin All-Father himself.

“Throw!” my father commanded.

I did so with all my might, and he, smiling at me—which in life I don't remember him ever to have done—said over and over in a sort of singsong, “Fly to all your heart's desire, silver, blood, and Hekla fire.”

The spear flew from my hand into the glare of the rising sun—which had not been there a moment before—so that I could not see where it fell.

I awoke with a warm feeling in my breast. My father had spoken to me, as the noaidi said he would, and I guessed at once the meaning of my dream. My name—Odd—is, of course, also the ordinary word in our language for ‘spear point', and Odin All-Father, like my father in the dream, has but a single eye. So, I reasoned, by flying wherever Odin should send me, I would gain everything I desired—wealth, the death of my enemies, and a return to my home under fiery Hekla.

I told my dream that morning to Bergthora, for in the matter of dreams one should always seek the opinion of women. At first, she
complained that I thought a good deal too highly of Odin, but in the end she came round to admitting that it was a most excellent sign.

And it
was
—as far as it went. It's only that dreams have a way of never telling all the truth.

†

Bergthora sat across the table from me now on my last night in Nidaros. She and Stig had insisted on giving us all a farewell feast.

Long-beaked and long-necked, she nuzzled like an affectionate crane up against Stig, who sat beside her on the bench. She filled up both their mugs with an excellent wine that she had bought for the occasion, and pushed the flagon towards me.

“Odd Tangle-Hair,” she began, “a woman in my line of trade meets every sort of man sooner or later. You're not the handsomest of 'em, that must be admitted, and as for your soul, well, it don't bear thinking about—but I am fond of you all the same. It was a fair wind that brought you and Stig to me, and I'm only sorry that the two of you must be parted. He does think the world of you, you know, though he'd rather die than say so.”

Stig found something of interest to study at the bottom of his mug.

“I never had little'uns, as you know.” A tear started unexpectedly, which she erased with an angry swipe. “Well, Devil skin you, what I mean to say is that you must think of us as mother and father, being as you've none of your own. There, I've said it.” She closed her lips tight and looked fierce.

What a good woman she was.

“Bergthora Grimsdottir,” I replied, “I could wish you better luck than to be kin of mine, for they've all fared poorly. But I will call you mother if it pleases you. My own mother would have been proud to know you.” I leaned across and kissed her cheek.

Stig, having had his fill of this soft talk, changed the subject with a loud slap of his hand on the table. An old sailor, said he, beached and stranded as he was, could still delight in the names of foreign ports. And where then, did I aim to sail?

“England,” I answered off-hand. The fact was, I had given the matter practically no thought.

Ye-es—he nodded, his eyes scanning that far horizon of his—but
had I considered how the English coast was thick with soldiers now that Canute reigned there?

“Ireland, I mean.”

Ahh, but wasn't it a marvel how bold the Irish had grown lately, and how it was Norsemen that asked for quarter now?

“Well, you're mighty full of news, Stig, for a beached whale or whatever!”

“Only the waterfront gossip,” he answered mildly, with a twinkle in his eye. “Probably half lies.”

Stuf and Otkel, listening nearby, were making snorting noises behind their hands. Kalf was laughing, too.

“So, Steersman,” I said in my sternest captain's voice, “I suppose there is some part of the ocean you like better.”

“You mean, if any young sea rover was to ask me?”

“Yes, confound you.”

Up and down the table they stopped to listen.

“Well, since you ask, I'll tell you. This bit of the world is played out, don't you know. What was worth taking was taken long ago, and the natives are damned if they'll part with the rest.

“But there is a sea, far away to the rising sun,”—the moment he said that, the picture in my dream flashed like an arrow through my mind—“where the water is warm and nearly fresh enough to drink, and they say the ships are heavy-laden with cargo, and the people bury their kings under mountains of gold! Vikings who harry there either come home rich, or like it so well that they never come home at all.”

“Stig, you've seen this sea?”

“Pah! Do I look rich? But I've been told that she lies somewhere between Sweden and the land of the Wends. If you follow the coast southwards and eastwards you must come there sooner or later. Here—you may as well have this, too, just in case.” Slipping his hand into the wallet at his belt, he brought out the precious sun-stone and laid it in my palm.

“Stig, thank you. It's a far journey you send me on.”

“Wasn't too far for Olaf in his viking days,” said Bergthora. “The sea Stig means is called by some the Varangian Sea, and there's many a tale of how he harried there as a youth.”

“Did he indeed! Then the Varangian Sea it is,” I cried, “and by One-Eyed Odin, we will harry her as she never was before!”

From thirty throats burst a roar, accompanied by pounding of the boards and pounding of backs, tipping back of heads, and pouring of drink into mouths, into beards, down chins, and down chests. Then, one after another, the men leapt to their feet, purple-faced and wild-eyed, to vow in thundering voices that
this
and
this
many heads they'd take, and so and so many weeping girls they'd have, and so many—oh, so many—sacks of gold they'd lift, or else, damn them, be ashamed ever to see their fathers' faces again!

Meanwhile, Bergthora's girls ran from barrel to table and back again keeping the drinking horns full, but always, of course, stopping long enough for squeezes and wet kisses in between.

Warm with wine and expectation, I leaned back comfortably and looked along the table at the flushed and happy faces of my crew: at Stuf and Otkel, the two friends; at rough-tongued Brodd; at steady, careful Starkad; at Glum, whose speaking face, never resting, mirrored all the others; at the new men whose faces I scarcely yet knew. Some of them will feed the crows and leave their bones to bleach on the shore of this eastern sea, I thought, and
they know it
. There came to my mind that old viking verse:

Cattle die, kinsmen die
,

You die yourself one day
,

But word-fame, when you've won it, boys
,

That never dies away
.

†

As day broke, I breakfasted on salt-fish and butter, and went down with my men to the shipyard. Bergthora and Stig, old Ketil and his grandson, all of Bergthora's girls, and Kalf came down to see us off, as well as a crowd of womenfolk—the mothers, wives, and sweethearts of the local boys in my crew.

The Sea-Viper, splendid with her new serpent's head and tail, lay on rollers at the water's edge, while we trundled our chests, water barrels, arms, and provisions aboard her.

“Oh!” said Toke, pointing to the sky. “The geese!”

We looked up. Fleets and squadrons of them, flying out of the sun, passed over us in long slanting lines, sounding their war-horns like armies
of the air.

“A good sign,” said Stig. “All brave creatures are astir today.”

“Aye,” Ake agreed, as he squinted to measure his handiwork one last time, “the Viper wants to go, too.”

Truly, she was a beauty—eager and impatient, searching the sky's edge with her bright painted eyes. Only my stallion, Grani, had ever filled me with so much pride.

Gear stowed away, tackle all in order—it was time to say goodbye. From the water's edge, I gazed back beyond the wharf to the huddled roofs of thatch, to the winding streets, to the cathedral spire, set there by a troll, to the king's hall on the hill—and tried to recall that first morning so many months ago. That day, Stig had missed the smoke that should have risen from the royal hearth. Smoke was rising from it now. The Housecarles' women were cooking fish and venison for their men's breakfast.

Enjoy it, Danes, I thought. Something tells me you won't dine much longer off the fat of Nidaros.

Hours earlier, a rider had set off for the south to fetch back Bishop Grimkel. And when the Bishop came, it would be Kalf—Kalf the cripple, dragging himself in pain and joy, Kalf the Christman, singing hymns and giving thanks, Kalf Slender-Leg, my friend and brother, who would lead bishop and jarls and all the good Christian folk of Nidaros to that spot by the river. He would touch it with the tip of his crutch and say, “Dig here,” and so restore her saintly king to longing Norway.

That was my gift to him: the only thing of value I possessed, and far more precious to him than gold. What might happen after that was no affair of mine.

One last time, the men embraced their women, and some tossed their little'uns in the air, warning them sternly to mind their mams.

“Take care, Odd,” Bergthora sniffed and dabbed at her eye with the corner of her apron. “Whenever I think of the way poor Karl went down, why, it gives me a flutter.”

“Don't fear, Old Mother, I'm hard to kill.”

“Odd Tangle-Hair,” said Kalf, “I have lit candles for your safe homecoming to every saint I know.” Seeing something in my face, he said softly, “You aren't coming back, are you?”

“I expect not.”

Bergthora stiffened.

“Mother, I leave you Kalf Slender-Leg, a better son than you would ever have had in me.”

“God knows when we'll meet again,” said Kalf.

“They say an Icelander always goes home at last.”

“Someday in Iceland then, Odd.”

“Someday soon.” I clasped his arm. “Don't forget me.”

Glum joined us. “Friend Kalf, if you'd come with us, I would carry you on my back and never let you come to harm.”

“I know you would, my friend, but a warship is no place for someone like me. Now Glum, you won't forget what I told you—that you have an immortal soul, or, I should say, half of one anyway, and that I pray for it every day.”