The Sword & Sorcery Anthology (16 page)

“You have not much cause for that, have you?” she asked. “I
mean, you’ve been away so long… Of course, you have your mother.
She’s borne the brunt, stood like a shield before your siblings—” She
touched her lips. “I talk too much.”

“You talk as a friend,” he blurted. “May we always be friends.”

They wandered on, along a path from shore to fields. It went by
the shaw. Through boles and boughs and falling leaves, they saw
Thor’s image and altar among the trees. “I’ll make offering here for
my father’s health,” Hauk said, “though truth to tell, I’ve more faith
in my own strength than in any gods.”

“You have seen lands where strange gods rule,” she nodded.

“Yes, and there too, they do not steer things well,” he said. “It was
in a Christian realm that a huge wolf came raiding flocks, on which
no iron would bite. When it took a baby from a hamlet near our
camp, I thought I’d be less than a man did I not put an end to it.”

“What happened?” she asked breathlessly, and caught his arm.

“I wrestled it barehanded—no foe of mine was ever more fell—
and at last broke its neck.” He pulled back a sleeve to show scars of
terrible bites. “Dead, it changed into a man they had outlawed that
year for his evil deeds. We burned the lich to make sure it would not
walk again, and thereafter the folk had peace. And…we had friends,
in a country otherwise wary of us.”

She looked on him in the wonder he had hoped for.

Erelong she must return with her father. But the way between the
garths was just a few miles, and Hauk often rode or skied through the
woods. At home, he and his men helped do what work there was, and
gave merriment where it had long been little known.

Thyra owned this to her son, on a snowy day when they were by
themselves. They were in the women’s bower, whither they had gone
to see a tapestry she was weaving. She wanted to know how it showed
against those of the Westlands; he had brought one such, which hung
above the benches in the hall. Here, in the wide quiet room, was
dusk, for the day outside had become a tumbling whiteness. Breath
steamed from lips as the two of them spoke. It smelled sweet; both
had drunk mead until they could talk freely.

“You did better than you knew when you came back,” Thyra said.
“You blew like spring into this winter of ours. Einar and Unn were
withering; they blossom again in your nearness.”

“Strangely has our father changed,” Hauk answered sadly. “I
remember once when I was small, how he took me by the hand on a
frost-clear night, led me forth under the stars, and named for me the
pictures in them, Thor’s Wain, Freyja’s Spindle—how wonderful he
made them, how his deep slow laughterful voice filled the dark.”

“A wasting illness draws the soul inward,” his mother said. “He…
has no more manhood…and it tears him like fangs that he will die
helpless in bed. He must strike out at someone, and here we are.”

She was silent awhile before she added: “He will not live out the
year. Then you must take over.”

“I must be gone when weather allows,” Hauk warned. “I promised
Ottar.”

“Return as soon as may be,” Thyra said. “We have need of a strong
man, the more so now when yonder King Harald would reave their
freehold rights from yeomen.”

“It would be well to have a hearth of my own.” Hauk stared past
her, toward the unseen woods. Her worn face creased in a smile.

Suddenly they heard yells from the yard below. Hauk ran out onto
the gallery and looked down. Geirolf was shambling after an aged carl
named Atli. He had a whip in his hand and was lashing it across the
white locks and wrinkled cheeks of the man, who could not run fast
either and who sobbed.

“What is this?” broke from Hauk. He swung himself over the rail,
hung, and let go. The drop would at least have jarred the wind out
of most. He, though, bounced from where he landed, ran behind his
father, caught hold of the whip and wrenched it from Geirolf’s grasp.
“What are you doing?”

Geirolf howled and struck his son with a doubled fist. Blood
trickled from Hauk’s mouth. He stood fast. Atli sank to hands and
knees and fought not to weep.

“Are you also a heelbiter of mine?” Geirolf bawled.

“I’d save you from your madness, father,” Hauk said in pain. “Atli
followed you to battle ere I was born—he dandled me on his knee—
and he’s a free man. What has he done, that you’d bring down on us
the anger of his kinfolk?”

“Harm not the skipper, young man,” Atli begged. “I fled because
I’d sooner die than lift hand against my skipper.”

“Hell swallow you both!” Geirolf would have cursed further, but
the coughing came on him. Blood drops flew through the snowflakes,
down onto the white earth, where they mingled with the drip from
the heads of Hauk and Atli. Doubled over, Geirolf let them half lead,
half carry him to his shut-bed. There he closed the panel and lay
alone in darkness.

“What happened between you and him?” Hauk asked.

“I was fixing to shoe a horse,” Atli said into a ring of gaping
onlookers. “He came in and wanted to know why I’d not asked his
leave. I told him ’twas plain Kilfaxi needed new shoes. Then he
hollered, ‘I’ll show you I’m no log in the woodpile!’ and snatched
yon whip off the wall and took after me.” The old man squared his
shoulders. “We’ll speak no more of this, you hear?” he ordered the
household.

Nor did Geirolf, when next day he let them bring him some broth.

For more reasons than this, Hauk came to spend much of his
time at Leif’s garth. He would return in such a glow that even the
reproachful looks of his young sister and brother, even the sullen or
the weary greeting of his father, could not dampen it.

At last, when lengthening days and quickening blood bespoke
seafarings soon to come, that happened which surprised nobody. Hauk
told them in the hall that he wanted to marry Alfhild Leifsdottir, and
prayed Geirolf press the suit for him. “What must be, will be,” said his
father, a better grace than awaited. Union of the families was clearly
good for both.

Leif Egilsson agreed, and Alfhild had nothing but aye to say. The
betrothal feast crowded the whole neighborhood together in cheer.
Thyra hid the trouble within her, and Geirolf himself was calm if not
blithe.

Right after, Hauk and his men were busking themselves to fare.
Regardless of his doubts about gods, he led in offering for a safe
voyage to Thor, Aegir, and St. Michael. But Alfhild found herself a
quiet place alone, to cut runes on an ash tree in the name of Freyja.

When all was ready, she was there with the folk of Geirolf’s stead
to see the sailors off. That morning was keen, wind roared in trees
and skirled between cliffs, waves ran green and white beneath small
flying clouds. Unn could not but hug her brother who was going,
while Einar gave him a handclasp that shook. Thyra said, “Come
home hale and early, my son.” Alfhild mostly stored away the sight of
Hauk. Atli and others of the household mumbled this and that.

Geirolf shuffled forward. The cane on which he leaned rattled
among the stones of the beach. He was hunched in a hairy cloak
against the sharp air. His locks fell tangled almost to the coal-
smoldering eyes. “Father, farewell,” Hauk said, taking his free hand.

“You mean ‘fare far,’ don’t you?” Geirolf grated. “‘Fare far and
never come back.’ You’d like that, wouldn’t you? But we will meet
again. Oh, yes, we will meet again.”

Hauk dropped the hand. Geirolf turned and sought the house.
The rest behaved as if they had not heard, speaking loudly, amidst
yelps of laughter, to overcome those words of foreboding. Soon Hauk
called his orders to be gone.

Men scrambled aboard the laden ship. Its sail slatted aloft and
filled, the mooring lines were cast loose, the hull stood out to sea.
Alfhild waved until it was gone from sight behind the bend where
Disafoss fell.

The summer passed—plowing, sowing, lambing, calving, farrowing,
hoeing, reaping, flailing, butchering—rain, hail, sun, stars, loves,
quarrels, births, deaths—and the season wore toward fall. Alfhild
was seldom at Geirolf’s garth, nor was Leif; for Hauk’s father grew
steadily worse. After midsummer he could no longer leave his bed.
But often he whispered, between lung-tearing coughs, to those who
tended him, “I would kill you if I could.”

On a dark day late in the season, when rain roared about the
hall and folk and hounds huddled close to fires that hardly lit the
gloom around, Geirolf awoke from a heavy sleep. Thyra marked it
and came to him. Cold and dankness gnawed their way through her
clothes. The fever was in him like a brand. He plucked restlessly at
his blanket, where he half sat in his short shut-bed. Though flesh had
wasted from the great bones, his fingers still had strength to tear the
wool. The mattress rustled under him. “Straw-death, straw-death,”
he muttered.

Thyra laid a palm on his brow. “Be at ease,” she said.

It dragged from him: “You’ll not be rid…of me…so fast…by straw-
death.” An icy sweat broke forth and the last struggle began.

Long it was, Geirolf’s gasps and the sputtering flames the only noises
within that room, while rain and wind ramped outside and night drew
in. Thyra stood by the bedside to wipe the sweat off her man, blood
and spittle from his beard. A while after sunset, he rolled his eyes back
and died.

Thyra called for water and lamps. She cleansed him, clad him in
his best, and laid him out. A drawn sword was on his breast.

In the morning, thralls and carls alike went forth under her orders.
A hillock stood in the fields about half a mile inland from the house.
They dug a grave chamber in the top of this, lining it well with timber.
“Won’t you bury him in his ship?” asked Atli.

“It is rotten, unworthy of him,” Thyra said. Yet she made them
haul it to the barrow, around which she had stones to outline a hull.
Meanwhile folk readied a grave-ale, and messengers bade neighbors
come.

When all were there, men of Geirolf’s carried him on a litter to
his resting place and put him in, together with weapons and a jar of
Southland coins. After beams had roofed the chamber, his friends
from aforetime took shovels and covered it well. They replaced the
turfs of sere grass, leaving the hillock as it had been save that it was
now bigger. Einar Thorolfsson kindled his father’s ship. It burned
till dusk, when the horns of the new moon stood over the fjord.
Meanwhile folk had gone back down to the garth to feast and drink.
Riding home next day, well gifted by Thyra, they told each other that
this had been an honorable burial.

The moon waxed. On the first night that it rose full, Geirolf came
again.

A thrall named Kark had been late in the woods, seeking a
strayed sheep. Coming home, he passed near the howe. The moon
was barely above the pines; long shivery beams of light ran on the
water, lost themselves in shadows ashore, glinted wanly anew where
a bedewed stone wall snaked along a stubblefield. Stars were few. A
great stillness lay on the land, not even an owl hooted, until all at
once dogs down in the garth began howling. It was not the way they
howled at the moon; across the mile between, it sounded ragged
and terrified. Kark felt the chill close in around him, and hastened
toward home.

Something heavy trod the earth. He looked around and saw the
bulk of a huge man coming across the field from the barrow. “Who’s
that?” he called uneasily. No voice replied, but the weight of those
footfalls shivered through the ground into his bones. Kark swallowed,
gripped his staff, and stood where he was. But then the shape came so
near that moonlight picked out the head of Geirolf. Kark screamed,
dropped his weapon, and ran.