The Sword & Sorcery Anthology (17 page)

Geirolf followed slowly, clumsily behind.

Down in the garth, light glimmered red as doors opened. Folk
saw Kark running, gasping for breath. Atli and Einar led the way out,
each with a torch in one hand, a sword in the other. Little could they
see beyond the wild flame-gleam. Kark reached them, fell, writhed on
the hard-beaten clay of the yard, and wailed.

“What is it, you lackwit?” Atli snapped, and kicked him. Then
Einar pointed his blade.

“A stranger—” Atli began.

Geirolf rocked into sight. The mould of the grave clung to him.
His eyes stared unblinking, unmoving, blank in the moonlight, out of
a gray face whereon the skin crawled. The teeth in his tangled beard
were dry. No breath smoked from his nostrils. He held out his arms,
crook-fingered.

“Father!” Einar cried. The torch hissed from his grip, flickered
weakly at his feet, and went out. The men at his back jammed the
doorway of the hall as they sought its shelter.

“The skipper’s come again,” Atli quavered. He sheathed his sword,
though that was hard when his hand shook, and made himself step
forward. “Skipper, d’you know your old shipmate Atli?”

The dead man grabbed him, lifted him, and dashed him to earth.
Einar heard bones break. Atli jerked once and lay still. Geirolf trod
him and Kark underfoot. There was a sound of cracking and rending.
Blood spurted forth.

Blindly, Einar swung blade. The edge smote but would not bite. A
wave of grave-chill passed over him. He whirled and bounded back
inside.

Thyra
had seen. “Bar the door,” she bade. The windows were alread
y
shuttered against frost. “Men, stand fast. Women, stoke up the fires.”

They heard the lich groping about the yard. Walls creaked where
Geirolf blundered into them. Thyra called through the door, “Why
do you wish us ill, your own household?” But only those noises gave
answer. The hounds cringed and whined.

“Lay iron at the doors and under every window,” Thyra commanded.
“If it will not cut him, it may keep him out.”

All that night, then, folk huddled in the hall. Geirolf climbed onto
the roof and rode the ridgepole, drumming his heels on the shakes
till the whole building boomed. A little before sunrise, it stopped.
Peering out by the first dull dawnlight, Thyra saw no mark of her
husband but his deep-sunken footprints and the wrecked bodies he
had left.

“He grew so horrible before he died,” Unn wept. “Now he can’t
rest, can he?”

“We’ll make him an offering,” Thyra said through her weariness.
“It may be we did not give him enough when we buried him.”

Few would follow her to the howe. Those who dared, brought
along the best horse on the farm. Einar, as the son of the house when
Hauk was gone, himself cut its throat after a sturdy man had given the
hammer-blow. Carls and wenches butchered the carcass, which Thyra
and Unn cooked over a fire in whose wood was blent the charred rest
of the dragonship. Nobody cared to eat much of the flesh or broth.
Thyra poured what was left over the bones, upon the grave.

Two ravens circled in sight, waiting for folk to go so they could
take the food. “Is that a good sign?” Thyra sighed. “Will Odin fetch
Geirolf home?”

That night everybody who had not fled to neighboring steads
gathered in the hall. Soon after the moon rose, they heard the footfalls
come nearer and nearer. They heard Geirolf break into the storehouse
and worry the laid-out bodies of Atli and Kark. They heard him kill
cows in the barn. Again he rode the roof.

In the morning Leif Egilsson arrived, having gotten the news. He
found Thyra too tired and shaken to do anything further. “The ghost
did not take your offering,” he said, “but maybe the gods will.”

In the oakenshaw, he led the giving of more beasts. There was talk
of a thrall for Odin, but he said that would not help if this did not.
Instead, he saw to the proper burial of the slain, and of those kine
which nobody would dare eat. That night he abode there.

And Geirolf came back. Throughout the darkness, he tormented
the home which had been his.

“I will bide here one more day,” Leif said next sunrise. “We all
need rest—though ill is it that we must sleep during daylight when
we’ve so much readying for winter to do.”

By that time, some other neighborhood men were also on hand.
They spoke loudly of how they would hew the lich asunder.

“You know not what you boast of,” said aged Grim the Wise.
“Einar smote, and he strikes well for a lad, but the iron would not
bite. It never will. Ghost-strength is in Geirolf, and all the wrath he
could not set free during his life.”

That night folk waited breathless for moonrise. But when the
gnawed shield climbed over the pines, nothing stirred. The dogs, too,
no longer seemed cowed. About midnight, Grim murmured into the
shadows, “Yes, I thought so. Geirolf walks only when the moon is full.”

“Then tomorrow we’ll dig him up and burn him!” Leif said.

“No,” Grim told them. “That would spell the worst of luck for
everybody here. Don’t you see, the anger and unpeace which will not
let him rest, those would be forever unslaked? They could not but
bring doom on the burners.”

“What then can we do?” Thyra asked dully.

“Leave this stead,” Grim counselled, “at least when the moon is
full.”

“Hard will that be,” Einar sighed. “Would that my brother Hauk
were here.”

“He should have returned erenow,” Thyra said. “May we in our
woe never know that he has come to grief himself.”

In truth, Hauk had not. His wares proved welcome in Flanders, where he bartered for cloth that he took across to England. There Ottar greeted him, and he met the young King Alfred. At that time there was no war going on with the Danes, who were settling into the Danelaw and thus in need of household goods. Hauk and Ottar did a thriving business among them. This led them to think they might do as well in Iceland, whither Norse folk were moving who liked not King Harald Fairhair. They made a voyage to see. Foul winds hampered them on the way home. Hence fall was well along when Hauk’s ship returned.

The day was still and cold. Low overcast turned sky and water the
hue of iron. A few gulls cruised and mewed, while under them sounded
creak and splash of oars, swearing of men, as the knorr was rowed.
At the end of the fjord-branch, garth and leaves were tiny splashes
of color, lost against rearing cliffs, brown fields, murky wildwood.
Straining ahead from afar, Hauk saw that a bare handful of men came
down to the shore, moving listlessly more than watchfully. When his
craft was unmistakable, though, a few women—no youngsters—sped
from the hall as if they could not wait. Their cries came to him more
thin than the gulls’.

Hauk lay alongside the dock. Springing forth, he called merrily,
“Where is everybody? How fares Alfhild?” His words lost themselves
in silence. Fear touched him. “What’s wrong?”

Thyra trod forth. Years might have gone by during his summer
abroad, so changed was she. “You are barely in time,” she said in an
unsteady tone. Taking his hands, she told him how things stood.

Hauk stared long into emptiness. At last, “Oh, no,” he whispered.
“What’s to be done?”

“We hoped you might know that, my son,” Thyra answered. “The
moon will be full tomorrow night.”

His voice stumbled. “I am no wizard. If the gods themselves would
not lay this ghost, what can I do?”

Einar spoke, in the brashness of youth: “We thought you might
deal with him as you did with the werewolf.”

“But that was—No, I cannot!” Hauk croaked. “Never ask me.”

“Then I fear we must leave,” Thyra said. “For aye. You see how
many have already fled, thrall and free alike, though nobody else has
a place for them. We’ve not enough left to farm these acres. And who
would buy them of us? Poor must we go, helpless as the poor ever are.”

“Iceland—” Hauk wet his lips. “Well, you shall not want while I live.”
Yet he had counted on this homestead, whether to dwell on or sell.

“Tomorrow we move over to Leif’s garth, for the next three days
and nights,” Thyra said.

Unn shuddered. “I know not if I can come back,” she said. “This
whole past month here, I could hardly ever sleep.” Dulled skin and
sunken eyes bore her out.

“What else would you do?” Hauk asked.

“Whatever I can,” she stammered, and broke into tears. He knew:
wedding herself too young to whoever would have her dowryless,
poor though the match would be—or making her way to some town
to turn whore, his little sister.

“Let me think on this,” Hauk begged. “Maybe I can hit on some
thing.”

His crew were also daunted when they heard. At eventide they sat
in the hall and gave only a few curt words about what they had done
in foreign parts. Everyone lay down early on bed, bench, or floor, but
none slept well.

Before sunset, Hauk had walked forth alone. First he sought the
grave of Atli. “I’m sorry, dear old friend,” he said. Afterward he went
to Geirolf’s howe. It loomed yellow-gray with withered grass wherein
grinned the skull of the slaughtered horse. At its foot were strewn the
charred bits of the ship, inside stones which outlined a greater but
unreal hull. Around reached stubblefields and walls, hemmed in by
woods on one side and water on the other, rock lifting sheer beyond.
The chill and the quiet had deepened.

Hauk climbed to the top of the barrow and stood there a while,
head bent downward. “Oh, father,” he said, “I learned doubt in
Christian lands. What’s right for me to do?” There was no answer. He
made a slow way back to the dwelling.

All were up betimes next day. It went slowly over the woodland
path to Leif’s, for animals must be herded along. The swine gave
more trouble than most. Hauk chuckled once, not very merrily, and
remarked that at least this took folk’s minds off their sorrows. He
raised no mirth.

But he had Alfhild ahead of him. At the end of the way, he
sprinted shouting into the yard. Leif owned less land than Geirolf,
his buildings were smaller and fewer, most of his guests must house
outdoors in sleeping bags. Hauk paid no heed. “Alfhild!” he called.
“I’m here!”

She left the dough she was kneading and sped to him. They hugged
each other hard and long, in sight of the whole world. None thought
that shame, as things were. At last she said, striving not to weep,
“How we’ve longed for you! Now the nightmare can end.”

He stepped back. “What mean you?” he uttered slowly, knowing
full well.

“Why—” She was bewildered. “Won’t you give him his second death?”

Hauk gazed past her for some heartbeats before he said: “Come
aside with me.”

Hand in hand, they wandered off. A meadow lay hidden from the
garth by a stand of aspen. Elsewhere around, pines speared into a sky
that today was bright. Clouds drifted on a nipping breeze. Far off, a
stag bugled.

Hauk spread feet apart, hooked thumbs in belt, and made himself
meet her eyes. “You think over-highly of my strength,” he said.

“Who has more?” she asked. “We kept ourselves going by saying
you would come home and make things good again.”

“What if the drow is too much for me?” His words sounded raw
through the hush. Leaves dropped yellow from their boughs.

She flushed. “Then your name will live.”

“Yes—” Softly he spoke the words of the High One:

“Kine die, kinfolk die,

and so at last oneself.

This I know that never dies:

how dead men’s deeds are deemed.”

“You will do it!” she cried gladly.

His head shook before it drooped. “No. I will not. I dare not.”