Odin’s Child (36 page)

I have been saluted by troops many times since, but the first time, like a boy's first woman, is surely the sweetest.

“D'you hear, Black Thorvald?” I whispered. “D'you hear it, Father?”

It soon appeared, however, that glory would be our only reward. Kol and his men had gone all spring without taking a prize and there was little aboard worth stealing.

We turned instead to sorting out the dead and wounded. Seven of my new Norwegians had been killed and two others so badly hurt that they died within the day. And all the rest of us were cut up some way or another. For my part, I found I had lost just the tip of my right little finger, I don't know how. A ridiculous sort of wound but painful once the heat of battle was past.

As we were throwing the dead overboard, Red Kol did a fine thing. Not caring to live with his shame—or without his chin—he dragged himself to the gunnel, indicated by some pathetic gestures that he wished to hold his sword in his hand, and clutching it, toppled into the sea.

His men looked sullenly at me. “See how a Dane dies!” one of them said in a loud voice. They were all Danes, they said, sailing out of Hedeby Town in Jutland—and not accustomed to taking orders from other men.

“Butcher the lot,” snarled Brodd to me, “and take the ship, she's worth a bit, ain't she? It's a shame to fight so hard for so little.”

But for one thing, we hadn't the men to put a crew aboard her, and for another, who would be left to tell our deeds in Denmark if we killed them all?

“I'll choose out fifteen of their best,” I said. “We can guard that many, and at the first market town we come to, we'll put them on the block and share the profits. Meantime, we'll hobble them with ropes around their
ankles, sit them at the oars, and make them do the rowing.”

For this I was cheered a second time long and loud. Oh, what a shrewd and far-sighted captain I was!

When we were ready to sail away, “Danes,” I cried, with a wave of my hand, “tell them in Hedeby Town that Odd—that
Black
Odd Thorvaldsson is the man who beat you!”

†

My plan was to make for some port on the Wendish coast where, besides selling our slaves, I could leave my wounded and enlist more crew. One of the prisoners, a man called Ottar, volunteered in a whisper—hoping, no doubt, to earn my gratitude—to guide us to Jumne, which, he said, was the greatest town of the Wends, where men gathered to buy and sell from every country in the East, and where good sailors could always be found.

And so for Jumne I set our course.

We sailed by easy stages, making landfall twice at little islands on the way to rest and fill our water barrels. Our prisoners gave us no trouble, for I set Glum to watch over them day and night. They were so docile, in fact, that we soon stopped bothering to tie their feet.

The sun had set on the fifth day from the sea fight and the sickle of a new moon was rising when we spied a light on the dark horizon.

“Jumne?” I asked Ottar.

In spite of his mates groaning and cursing him, he nodded that it was.

As we drew closer, what had appeared as a single point of light divided in two—each a beacon fire burning on the top of a square stone tower. And what had seemed to be only a stretch of dark coast between them, became a pair of vast stone arms that reached into the sea to encircle a wide harbor. The beacon towers stood at the two ends of these arms and were joined together by an archway that was high and wide enough to let a dragon ship pass under it, mast, oars, and all. The passage, however, was barred against us by a massive iron chain.

Coming within hailing distance, and seeing no signs of life anywhere, I cupped my hands and hallooed. No answer came back from the black wall that loomed above us.

“We're a peaceful ship,” I called again, pronouncing my words carefully to make these foreign sentries understand, “seeking Jumne Town.”

Above us, a laugh, and the silhouettes of heads appeared on the parapet. Suddenly, I had a bad feeling about this place. But before I could change my mind, a thrum sounded from a loophole in the wall and a point of fire flashed out, boring a smoking hole in our sail. We dove for our shields.

“Veer off!” shouted a voice from the wall. “You've nothing to do with the Jomsvikings, nor they with you!”

“Braggi! Hi, Braggi!”—a different voice—“Ingjald wagers a silver ounce you don't hit a man before he does!”

“Back water!” I cried as a second fire-dart streaked toward us. One of my Norwegians twisted and dropped to the deck with the thing flaming in his chest.

“Pay me, Ingjald!” crowed the one called Braggi.

More voices took up the challenge, and from all along the wall catapults thrummed, raking our deck with fire. A tongue of flame licked up the sail where a fire-dart pinned it to the mast. From somewhere amidships Stig was bawling, “Push, damn you—push on the oars!” And from the bow I heard the scream of my baffled berserker.

Then another voice: “Up, Danes!”

In an instant they were over the side and splashing toward the chain—half our rowing strength—while my own men cowered behind their sea chests! I thought I would go mad then and there, with helpless fury.

The sail was now a sheet of flame and the timbers smoked in a dozen places. Deep within me, memories stirred of that other fire, while the smell of burning flesh filled my throat. I stood for an instant paralyzed with fear.

Stig broke the spell, shaking me and crying, “Odd, the sail. Help me!”

Bending low, we dashed through the hail of darts and together hacked at the shrouds until the yardarm fell in a shower of sparks. We stamped out the smoldering rags of sail, then plunging our helmets in the water barrel, dashed out the smaller fires on deck, and all the while screamed at the men to row.

Taking an oar myself, we pushed for our lives, moving the Viper slowly away from the wall. The darts began to fall wide, hissing into the water off to our left. With our fires put out, their gunners had lost us in the dark. The whole bloody shambles probably hadn't lasted three minutes.

Stunned and spent, we drifted out of range.

“Everyone call out his name,” I ordered, “and say if he's hurt.”

Voices answered in the dark:

“Stig—nothing much, burnt my fingers.”

“Kraki—not hurt.”

“Bengt—not hurt, thanks to God and Blessed Olaf.”

“Halfdan—I think my leg's broke.”

I counted twenty-one.

“Stuf?” came Otkel's voice in a whisper. “Stuf?” He groped along the deck, throwing himself on one smoking corpse after another, until he touched one that slumped over its oar—“Ahhh, Stuf!”

We Icelanders stood around him as he cradled his dead friend in his arms. Looking closely, I could see where the dart had pierced the back of Stuf's skull, gone clear through the helmet, driving the metal into his head, and come halfway out through his mouth.

“Say a Paternoster for him, Otkel, if you can,” Starkad said gently, “and then quickest out of sight is best.”

The boy wrenched out some words while we lifted Stuf up and slipped him over the side. He was the first of my Icelanders to die.

We felt in the dark for other bodies.

“Here's something,” called Brodd from the fo'c'sle, dragging a figure to its feet. “One of Red Kol's.” Twisting his arms behind him, he thrust his face at me. I beat it with my fists until I had exhausted my rage enough to speak. And then I pricked him in the throat with the point of my knife.

“You cowardly bastard, what
was
that place?”

“Call' Jom'bor',” mumbled the face through bleeding lips.

“Called what?” I pressed harder with my knife.

“Jomsbor'—Jomsborg.”

“Not Jumne?”

“Please—not my idea,” the fellow began to sniffle, “Ottar's idea—he passed us the word.”

“And those—what did they call themselves, Jomsvikings?—they're friends of yours?”

Not friends exactly. His story came out in quavering fragments of speech. The warriors who held that harbor were greedy, grim, and pitiless men. Still, they were Danes, and maybe inclined to reward some countrymen for delivering into their hands a well-made ship and its crew. At worst, it was nearer home than the slave pens of Jumne.

“And you—why didn't you jump with the others?”

“Can't swim,” the bruised lips mumbled.

And, finally, did this scum, this maggot, know where Jumne really was? And would he show us the way in hopes that I might forget to cut his throat?

He would.

We found Jumne later that same night on an island hidden in a maze of channels and lagoons at the mouth of the River Oder. I kept my promise strictly to the maggot—about not cutting his throat, I mean. When we were sure of our bearings, I let Otkel tie his hands and push him overboard.

As we brought the Sea Viper in toward the sheltered roadstead, a sea of lights spread out before us—the cook fires of merchants encamped along the beach next to their ships. Around their fires they sat, jabbering in Frisian and Saxon, Wendish, Arabic, Greek, and still stranger tongues (although I couldn't have told you then what any of them were). Here we too would camp, but first our rumbling bellies needed filling.

We beached the Viper, removed her figurehead out of respect for the spirits of the place, hung out our shields on the gunwales, and plunged greedily into the confusion of taverns and cook shops that sprawled helter-skelter along the waterfront. But as it happened, no place was roomy enough for us all, and so some stopped here and some there until finally there remained only Stig, Glum, Brodd, and myself, together with Kraki and Bengt of the Nidaros boys.

Beyond the beach, the lights of the town shone everywhere from doors and windows thrown open to the heavy night air. The place was huge—many times bigger than Nidaros—and it stayed up later at night. Putting aside hunger for a while, I led our party up one lane and down
another, deeper into the town, just to take in the size of it, until before long we had left the hubbub of the waterfront far behind.

“Listen!” said Stig. There was a murmur of shouting from somewhere far in the distance. “There's no end to the place,” said Brodd. “If you told 'em at home, they'd call you a liar.”

“Icelanders?” sneered Bengt. Lank-haired and dumpling-faced, at fifteen he was the youngest of our crew. “Why, I guess Icelanders would call you a liar if you was to tell 'em dogs have fleas! Eh, Captain? Ha, ha!”

Norwegians love to pretend that we are bumpkins because we have no towns.

“It's hard if we're to be mocked by babies,” said Brodd, and knocked Bengt down with his fist. Immediately, Kraki went for his knife. He was Bengt's second cousin and big enough to tackle Brodd. I jumped between them, swearing at all three with a rougher tongue than I had used before to any man in the crew.

It's what we've just come through, I thought, being shamed and beaten by those Jomsvikings and not a thing we can do about it, and so we turn on each other.

Stig and I held them apart until they cooled off.

“Enough of this wandering then,” grumbled Kraki, “I want to drink.”

So we set about to retrace our steps. After blundering a while down streets too dark and quiet, it was plain that we were lost.

“Let these shrewd town-dwellers find us the way out,” muttered Brodd.

But Bengt and Kraki kept quiet.

As we rounded a corner into still another unfamiliar lane, Stig grimaced and said, “What is that stench?”

From the front of nearly every house, long poles leaned out over the footway, from whose ends hung the rotting carcasses of fowls and cats and other small things—offerings, I guessed, to the city's gods. In this region of the world, the White Christ still trod lightly.

At the bottom of the lane we chose a branching path, and presently found ourselves in a dark little street that was fenced along one side by a row of palings higher than our heads. Baffled again, we were just turning back when the shouting that Stig had heard before sounded suddenly closer.

Out of the shadows ahead of us, burst a mob of running men, their
faces garish in the light of torches. We stood back to let them pass, but before they reached us, a gate in the palisade flew open, and paying us no heed at all, they halted and milled around it, all shoving at once to get through. In the midst of them, a figure thrashed and struggled, letting go a string of curses in a fine, fiery Norse that rose above the foreign babble.

Now, here's a chance, thought I, to wash away the taste of defeat.

And so I cried, “Boys, does it seem to you too many foreigners for one lone Northman? We must make him share!”

With a whoop, we charged them.

Their rear rank turned in surprise to face us. They were armed mostly with stones and cudgels, though a few brandished swords. Meanwhile the rest, with their prisoner, hurried on through the narrow gate, banging it shut and bolting it behind them.

We made short work of the defenders and five blows of Glum's axe brought down the gate. We stumbled through it just in time to see the mob disappearing inside a steeply-roofed building that stood some hundred paces back from the fence. On either side of the doorway, poles, like those that lined the streets outside, receded into the shadows. A breeze carried the smell of decay to our nostrils. All this I took in in less time than it takes to tell it.

Glum was first to the door and held it open for us with his shoulder. With swords drawn, we burst inside—and stopped short. The narrow chamber was packed with men and women: short, broad-headed, mostly fair; the men's heads, which were shaved back to the ears, presented a great surface of scalp to reflect the glow of the torches that lined the walls. The look on those faces was murderous. But that wasn't what stopped us.

Against the farther wall, there squatted, huge and heavy, on feet crusted with blood, a god, whose oaken body was cracked and black with the smoke of centuries. It stared out of white saucer eyes set in four misshapen heads. I hadn't the squeamish nature of a Christman, but this was not an easy god to look at all the same.