Odin’s Child (37 page)

And stretched on the ground with his head between two of the god's black feet, was their prisoner, writhing under the weight of three or four of his captors, one of whom held a wicked-looking short sword to his throat.

“Wendfolk business. Go away, you!”

A thick-set man glowered at us from under bushy eyebrows. Behind
him, his people raised their clubs and stones menacingly. I guessed there were upwards of fifty of them to our five.

But Glum replied with a terrific howl that made them all gasp and shrink back though there was little room in the packed chamber for them to move. All, that is, but the bushy-browed man, who bravely stood his ground.

Seizing the moment, I cried in a ringing voice, “That man's our friend, let him go!”

Bushy-brows scowled and gave me back just as loud, “That one steal. You look—”

Turning, he pushed his way to the side wall of the temple, bent over a low stand, and came up with a great wooden bowl cradled in his bulging arms. “You look!” he commanded again.

I looked and saw enough copper and silver there to have paid for my ship twice over.

“Steal,” he repeated.

“Is
that
what this is about? I shook my head and smiled. “Up to his old tricks again, is he? Well, we are heartily ashamed of him. Look, you tell me what he took and I'll make it up to you—no, no, I insist.”

The subject of our talk stopped struggling and lay quite still, too startled, no doubt, to move.

“Now, how much did you say?” I asked in my friendliest tone while reaching into my purse and pulling out a handful of coins—the last ones that I possessed in the world.

The Wends began to whisper among themselves. Bushy-brows just stared and looked perplexed. Finally, balancing the heavy bowl in one arm, he held up a square hand with three blunt fingers showing. “This many ounce.”

“Only that?” I smiled.

Before he could think again, I handed my sword to Bengt who was beside me, and stepped forward with my palm out-stretched.

Cautiously, bushy-brows moved the bowl towards me—the whole room leaned forward—and with a kick I sent it flying into the air.

Pandemonium. I flung myself on the man with the short sword, the lads leapt in around me, slashing right and left, Glum howled and the Wends fell over each other, scrambling for their treasure and bolting for the door.

“Man, get me on my feet and be quick!” snarled the figure on the floor.

Not long on gratitude, I thought, and started to say, “Find your own feet,” when I took a closer look at him.

He was nearly as dirty, cracked, and seamed as the wooden idol that crouched over him. But while that god was oversupplied with eyes, hands, and feet, this poor fellow lacked one of each.

“Odd, half the damn town's out there!” called Stig from the doorway.

“Right, old fellow, up you get.” I gathered him and slung him onto Glum's shoulders piggyback. “Form a wedge, boys,” I ordered.

But the boys, aside from Glum and Stig, were on their hands and knees, scrabbling in the dark for the coins and stuffing them down their shirts and in their shoes and caps as fast as they could scoop them up.

“Brodd, damn you! Kraki, Bengt!”

They pretended not to hear me.

A spear thudded against the doorpost, making Stig jump back for cover. Beyond the open door stretched a fiery sea of torches.
If they light the roof—!

“As you hope to live,” I shouted, “stand to!” And finding my sword on the floor, where Bengt had tossed it, I applied the flat of it to their backsides. They looked mutinous, but they got to their feet.

Behind Glum, who cleared the way with more stupendous howls, we charged into the crowd.

“Where away, old man?” I shouted to the bundle on Glum's back.

“Out the gate and hard to starboard!”

With the mob hot on our heels, we raced through dark streets. About the time I thought I could run no more, our pursuers fell back and let us go. We had reached the waterfront, where the foreigners outnumbered the natives, and they feared to raise a riot here. Gasping and laughing, we staggered about, while from the taverns that lined the street, a crowd poured out to see what all the commotion was, and buzzed with curiosity at the sight of Glum and his passenger.

We chose a place and went in. It was full of the usual waterfront riff-raff, jostling each other on the benches, gambling noisily, and dousing themselves with ale. On closer inspection, a half dozen of the riff-raff turned out to be my men. Starkad caught my eye and waved us over.

“Bit of fun with the locals,” I explained breathlessly.

“Who's that wreck of a man?”

Out the gate and hard to starboard
!

“Can't say—we've just met.”

Glum bent down and the old man slid lightly to the floor, steadying himself with a bony hand on the berserker's arm. Then, giving himself a shake, he peered narrowly at us and in a rasping voice, announced himself as, “Einar Tree-Foot”—simultaneously thumping the floor with his peg leg by way of explanation of the name—“who would stand you to a round of drink, for he knows how to behave politely, but that he hasn't got the silver for it. Lacking that, he'll say good night to you.”

He let go of Glum, but immediately stumbled against the table, catching himself as best he could with his one hand and his round knob of a wrist. He tried another step, gripping the table's edge, but keeping his face turned away from us, as though ashamed of his infirmity. I caught him under the arms before he fell again and sat him on the bench next to Otkel. We crowded in beside him.

“Bloody Wend bastards took away my crutch,” he growled.

Starkad, sitting down opposite, pushed a trencher of boiled venison and a pile of flatbread toward him. “Sink your fang in this, old man. Put some flesh on those bones—what ones you have left.”

We laughed, and the old man smiled, saying that he would take just a bite for politeness, since he had dined already that day and wasn't very hungry. But from the way he fell on the meat, giving it light treatment with his few stumps of teeth and swallowing as fast as he could put it in his mouth, I guessed that he had not eaten in days.

While we watched him, I told the others what little I knew, and when at last he pushed the trencher away and belched contentedly, I asked him to tell us his story.

He was a while making up his mind to speak, tugging on his beard, which resembled a Billy goat's, and frowning to himself. Then he said abruptly, “You've stood me to a supper, and so I will sing for it. Einar Tree-Foot knows what's fair. I live as I must, being too old to fight and too young to beg.”

As to his age, he must have been seventy or more. He was leather-skinned and lean as a bone. His shirt hung from his pointed shoulders like the faded sail from a yardarm on a windless day. Of his eyes, the left was a socket, barely hidden behind a bit of filthy rag, but the right one was needle-sharp, black and quick, like the eye of a bird.

“Come every new moon night, these Wends like to throw a coin in
four-headed Svantevit's bowl—him being the chief bogey hereabouts—and I do likewise, except that I have a trick, don't you see, of taking out more 'n what I put in—with these.”

He held up his left hand, flexing the skinny fingers and running a supple thumb over the tips of them. Stig, who claimed to be a thief of some pretensions, looked on with interest.

“The blind old hag that guards the place never caught me at it once in all these many years. Only tonight they had a different old woman mounting guard, and doesn't she let out a yowl when she sees me pop a coin into my mouth—that's where I hide 'em. Well, I lay her out with my crutch and make off hot-foot with the lot of 'em at my heels. Was a time, when I was a younger man, that I could run faster on one pin than any of you on two, but this time they overtook me, and the rest you know. I'm obliged to you”—he noticed me with a nod—“you're a trickster. I like tricksters. And I'll say ‘Thank you', which you may know that Einar Tree-Foot doesn't say to many.”

I thought, here's a stiff-necked old codger, for a petty thief. But I returned the nod and told him there was no need of thanks, since we were men who craved adventure, as he could see for himself, and who owned a sleek dragon and were bound for the viking life.

“The viking life!” He half rose from his seat and pounded the table with his one good hand—astonished, bowled over, ambushed, and routed by this huge absurdity. “Vikings!” He threw back his head in a cackling laugh that ended in a fit of coughing.

“You're too late! Go home to your mother, moon-calf. There are no vikings anymore.”

Now I was out of patience. “Tell that to Red Kol,” I shot back. And my men joined in with a chorus of angry grunts.

“Red Kol?” The black needle eye pricked me. “What've you got to do with Red Kol?”

“We met him at sea a few days ago,” I answered coolly. “And he looked like a viking to us.”

“Yes, well, there is him”—he screwed up his mouth as though tasting something nasty—“and one or two more like to call themselves vikings and scare folks. But it don't signify. How'd you get away from him?”

“We didn't get away from him,” I weighed out my words slowly. I wasn't going to let this evil old ruffian make light of us. “We took him.”

“Because,” Starkad broke in angrily, “we've a captain who knows his business.”

“And because,” I added, with my arm on Glum's massive shoulder, “we are so lucky as to have in our band a genuine Swedish berserker.”

The old fellow, who was just putting the ale horn to his lips, swallowed fast and looked up in wonder. “By the One-Eyed Odin, I should have known! The real thing? D'you bite your shield, man? D'you bare your breast to iron?”

Glum gave a deprecating smile and in his husky voice replied, “You can say you have ridden on the wolf's back, old man.”

“Indeed, I'll say it.” He looked from one to another of us as though only now seeing us for the first time. “And I'll say that sometimes Einar Tree-Foot speaks too quick.”

Satisfied with the impression I had made on him, I poured him more drink and asked carelessly, “Have you been a viking in your own day, then?”

He was silent for some moments while he fingered his beard and frowned. I was about to shrug and let my question pass, not wanting to embarrass him, when he said,

“There's a fortress on this coast not far away, stone walls around its harbor. You'd have passed it sailing in.”

All the warmth went out of me. “We did, old man. We found them rude.”

“Oh, young friend,” he chuckled, “men have found them rude these hundred years. What, have you never heard of the Jomsvikings?”

That word seemed to cut through all the other hubbub in the room. Faces everywhere looked up. Perhaps this old man's story had been heard here before, perhaps was worth hearing again. He aimed his voice high and began.

“Some still live—drunk most of the time and gone to fat, skulking behind their wall. But most of us are dead, or as good as. Time was, though, when we could put sixty dragons in the water.

“Palna Toki the Dane, foster-father to King Svein Forkbeard of Denmark, built that fortress and put in her the best of the Danish fighters—blood brothers all, none younger than eighteen nor older than fifty. Inside her gates no female ever passed, nor was any slander kindled twixt one man and another, nor any word of fear ever spoke. We shared our booty, obeyed our jarl, and the bond between us was stronger than the bond of kin.

“And every summer we sailed out to plunder—from Bjarmaland to Ireland. Men wailed and prayed when they saw our sails coming.”

Kraki snorted, as much as to call the old man a liar, looking round belligerently at the rest of us.

Einar, without noticing Kraki's existence by so much as a look, continued.

“It so happened one night, though, that Jarl Sigvalt—he was our chieftain in those days—drank deep at a feast and swore a powerful oath that he would hunt and harry his old enemy Jarl Haakon out of Norway, wipe his ass on Haakon's best cloak, drink up all Haakon's ale, and lie with Haakon's wife. In the morning when he sobered, it seemed like a poor idea, but he had said it out loud and so he was bound.”

In spite of my irritation with the old man, I leaned forward, enthralled. Here was word music!

“We sailed for Norway in our sixty dragons, thinking to take Haakon by surprise. But don't the Norns love a joke. We found him laying for us in the Jorundfjord with a hundred and eighty sail at his back, all the hulls lashed together and crammed to the gunwales with fighters. Even so, he found us a tough mouthful to chew. We gave him blow for blow until in his fear he sacrificed his very own son, his youngest son, to Odin! No sooner done but a hailstorm come out of nowhere and beat against our faces.”

Here, Glum, his face more than ever a living mirror, laughed out loud as if to say, Yes, that's friend Odin—that's his style.