Hrolf Kraki's Saga (15 page)

“I’ve missed you, my darling.” Helgi stopped. “Likewise has your son,” he added. “It would gladden you to see what a fine boy he is.”

“Your son—ours—” She twisted her head away. “No. That’s forever behind me.”

“Must it be? I didn’t come here about herrings or—you surely understand. I want to bring you home.”

“No. I beg you, by everything we ever had, no, … Father.”

Helgi’s mouth writhed. He stared beyond her, to the temple on its hill and the darkling trees. “How is your life here?” he asked.

She did not answer, save in quickened breath.

“How does he treat you?” Helgi nearly shouted.

She cast a look at the courtyard, where household folk moved, and to the door behind which her maidens sat, eyes and ears, eyes and ears, tongues, tongues, tongues. “Hush,” she begged. “You’d not have me speak ill of him I plighted my faith to.”

“You gave me yours first,” said Helgi.

She dropped her glass. It shattered. Mead pooled about her feet and dripped down between the gallery rails. Her hands wrestled. “We knew not what we did!”

“Did you know with Adhils?” he attacked.

She straightened. “Yes.”

“And—?”

“It’s been about as I awaited.”

“He shows you your rightful honor, does he not?” She heard how much he hoped she would say no.

“Yes,” she told him. “You’ve seen for yourself. I go about as first lady of a strong land. He … has not even other women.” She stopped to wet lips and clear throat. “In truth, he doesn’t often seek me. Which suits me well enough.”

“How lonely you are,” he said like a man with a spear in him.

“No, no, no. Things aren’t that bad. I have my girls—you’ve seen them, they look on me as a kind of mother. I hear their woes and give them my redes and, and try to see they marry well. … I have my duties, in the household, in the temple, in everything that becomes a queen. I can go sailing on the lake when I’m here. We have guests—”

“Many? I never heard Adhils called hospitable.”

She flushed. He knew she was ashamed of her husband’s niggardliness, and forbore to say he knew it. “Men who come to take service here,” she said hastily. “Jarls. Chieftains. Skalds, merchants, outlanders. They bring news of a world beyond this. And I—I’m taken up in cookery.” Her smile was forlorn. “You’d not believe how skillful I’ve grown about herbs. Also healing herbs, every kind of leechcraft, why, I, I, I’m on my way to becoming a wise-woman.”

He peered back at the temple. “Or a witch?” he growled.

“No!” Horror rode her voice. He thought of dead bodies rocking in the wind below yonder branches, and of Adhils on his witching stool, hunched by a kettle where nameless things boiled. “No, I’ve naught to do with that!” She turned on him, clenched her fists and said shakenly: “I
won’t do anything unbeseeming a Skjoldung. Not even … return to you … oh, my dearest.”

They could not speak much longer. She must go oversee the readying of the hall for her husband and the evening. Helgi was curt at that meal and drank hugely.

He and Yrsa spoke a few more times alone. The end was always the same. Oftener he talked to Adhils, of course, and did his best to sound out the Yngling. The latter stayed polite. “Yes, yes,” he said, taking Helgi’s arm as if he did not notice how the Dane winced, “I am glad you came, kinsman, glad we can reach understanding. Strife should never happen between kinsmen, as you and I well know, eh? And I think we two are bound closer than most—my wife, your daughter—that unluckiness of yours and hers which I may make bold to believe I’ve set aright, by giving her honorable marriage and by offering to the gods and, hm, hm, elsewhere.”

More than one of his own men warned Helgi: “Something’s wrong here, lord. I’m not friends with any of the Swedish captains, no. But I’ve drunk and gone fishing or hunting or played games with a few who’re at their call—yes, ha, played games with a girl or two—and something’s afoot. They’ve told me how their chiefs go warily about and mutter in corners. Mark them. Lord, you who nightly sit amongst them, and see if their manner don’t strike you the same.”

He, his heart full of Yrsa, would give back: “Oh, belike that trouble northward, which has most of the household warriors away from here. They’d take it unkindly if I pried.”

After a week, the secret came to Adhils that his troopers had swiftly fared back at his behest and lay in the woods for his orders. He made an excuse and hurried off. To the head berserker, a hairy, warty, slouching hulk named Ketil, he told what had happened and bade him and his band lie in ambush, to fall upon King Helgi while the Danes were returning to their ships. “I’ll send a number from the burg to help you,” he promised. “They’ll attack at the rear and put our foes in a pinch. For those
are
our foes. I’ll set everything at stake to see Helgi does not
escape. Well have I marked, he bears such love for my queen that I’ll never be safe while he’s alive.”

Meanwhile Helgi and Yrsa had a last talk which could not be overheard. “Since you won’t come away,” he said, “I’ll take my leave.”

“Live gladly,” she whispered, “my darling.”

“You bear up well,” he said. “I can do no less. But I wish—” He smote hands together and left her. She gazed after him, long beyond the time when he was gone from her sight.

To Adhils Helgi said he would be starting home. Queen Yrsa told her lord, not loudly, yet to be heard by everyone in the hall: “I think, because our guest sought us himself to bind our houses in friendship, it behooves us to send him off with gifts that will show how much this means to us.”

“Why, indeed, indeed,” said Adhils at once.

“He does not even blench,” mumbled a drunken man of his. “What’s got into the fat miser?” Everyone else was too happy at so good an ending to pay any heed. Even Helgi brightened somewhat. None could now say he had fared for naught.

And in the morning, in sight of the many who were gathered, Adhils ordered forth a wagon drawn by six white Southland horses. “This and these I give you, kinsman,” he smiled, “and a bit more besides.” Cheers arose as carls brought the things out of his storehouses: heavy golden rings and brooches, silver caskets full of coins from Romaborg, shimmering axes and swords, cunningly carved ivory of walrus and narwhal, jewel-crusted goblets, garments of costly weave and dye, amber, furs, oddly wrought goods from none knew where, until the axles groaned.

Helgi reddened and had trouble finding the right words for his thanks. He could not tell whether this smirking smooth-talking young man did mock him or seek to buy him off. Then his glance fell on Yrsa, and he saw such yearning that he thought it must all be because of her.

The king and the queen of the Swedes took horse to follow him part of the way. Adhils chatted glibly; Helgi and Yrsa were still. After a while the Yngling reined in.
“Well, kinsman,” he said, “I fear we must bid you goodbye, looking forward to when next we are together.”

“Come be our guests,” said Helgi hoarsely. “Both of you.”

“We can send word about that,” said Adhils. “Meanwhile, fare speedily, King Helgi, to the place where you are bound.”

He turned his steed. Helgi took Yrsa’s hands. “Live well,” he whispered in haste. “Always I’ll love you. Someday—”

“Someday,” she gave him back, wheeled her beast and trotted off after her lord and his men.

Helgi rode on at the head of his own troop. The river murmured and blinked in sunlight. Tree shadows dappled it. A kingfisher darted, blue as the hovering dragonflies. Hoofs plopped, leather squeaked, metal clinked. The air was thick and hot; men sweated and swatted at bugs. Westward above the leaves was piling a violet wall of clouds, and thunder rolled across miles.

Suddenly clangor awoke. Scrambling from the brush to take stance across the ruts came a host of armed men. Among them were a dozen giants, most byrnieless, who snarled and slavered and chewed their shield-rims.

Helgi reared his horse. “What in Loki’s name?” he cried.

His chief skipper said: “I think King Adhils does not mean for you to keep what he gave.”

“No—no, Yrsa—” Helgi half turned, as if to retreat for the first time in his life.

At his rear, around a bend in the road, came more men. They must have taken a side-way out of Uppsala—even this far off and past the noseguards on their helmets, Helgi knew some—and lurked till he had gone by them.

Helgi got down to earth, unslung his shield from the horse’s crupper and took it by the handgrip. Tall he loomed among his men; only his banner, flapping in a heavily rising breeze, overtopped him. “Well, we’re between the stone and the hammer,” he said. “But they may find us tougher metal than they reckoned on.”

River and steep, overgrown bank gave no room for the swine-array, a wedge-shaped line of mailed men with archers and slingers behind. Crowded together, death hailing from fore and aft, the Danes raised war-shout and charged ahead as best they could. In their van ran King Helgi. His sword hissed out of its sheath, blazed and screamed.

It sped against the first of the Swedes, himself big in a bright chain-coat. His shield took the blow, but he must lurch. Helgi pressed in, yelling. His blade leaped, up, down, around, dinning on helm and shield-rim, ever driving the man backward, in among his fellows. The Swede thought he saw a chance to chop at Helgi’s thigh. He tried, and his sword-arm spurted blood. He swayed and sank under trampling feet.

An ax boomed on Helgi’s own shield. That weapon, wielded two-handed, by its weight can smash through most men’s guard. Helgi sprang in. Sheer strength warded off those blows. He got his blade beneath the axhaft and cut a leg from under his foeman.

A spear-thrust took him in the calf. He hardly marked it. “Forward, forward!” He knew how to fling a cry from the depths of his lungs, so it soared above every shout, grunt, thud, rattle, and death-moan. “Hew past them! Win free!” For he saw, above the swaying helmets and twisted faces, that if his folk could break through those who confronted them, there would be none at their backs. Turning, they could hold the road against onslaught while they withdrew, and most of them might yet win to their ships.

That could be a long running battle. He moved against a berserker. Hemmed in, he could not get up speed. The monster swung an ax aloft and brought it down in a doomsday crash. Helgi’s shield splintered. His left arm nearly did. He staggered back. He would have attacked the berserker afresh, but too many roiled in the way.

Men of his fought stubbornly at his side. One by one, outnumbered, they were slain. Spears pierced him where he was not helmed or byrnied; his blood and sweat squelched in his shoes; the blows upon his metal might
go through, but made bruises down to the bone. Still he fought. His blade raved and reaped.

A berserker won to his standard bearer. That youth had no hope. Brains spattered, he toppled, and the flag went into the dust. Thereafter the Danes had nothing to tell them where they should stand. The Golden Boar waved on high. The Swedes pressed in.

Clouds drew blue-black over heaven, wind arose cold, the light turned a weird brass-yellow.

Helgi, cut off from the last of his men, backed up, fighting one-handed with a sword whose edge was dinted and blunted. The dead and the hurt marked his path. Still the foe came after him. He waded out into the river, which his blood reddened. Ketil, foremost berserker, met him there, howling, yowling, hurling blow after blow like the hailstones that now began to fall, yet never seeming to feel any that the king landed upon him.

Men heard Helgi croak, “Garm breaks loose. He has swallowed the moon—” He fell, and the river bore seaward what little was left of his blood.

Together with him died all who had gone ashore. The rest got word from scouts and fled back to Denmark. Yrsa wept. Here ends the tale of King Helgi.

I

Yrsa wept.

She had not known what Adhils had ordered until the thing was done. Upon him she wished every kind of ill, that his ship not sail though the wind be fair, that his horse not run though he would flee his killers, that his sword never bite till it sang about his own head—“not that you are one for ship or horse or sword, you womanish spell-cooker, you crow feeding on corpses!”

Adhils waited out her wrath in that watchful calm which frightened men. When she was only crying, he said easily: “I could not behave otherwise. Well you know Helgi would at last—and not very far from today, either—have sought to overthrow and kill me, and bear you off to a life of shame that you yourself had run from.”

Yrsa swallowed her tears, met his gaze so the clang could almost be heard, and told him: “It is not seemly for you to preen yourself over having betrayed that man to whom I owed the most and whom I loved the most, and for this sake I will never be true to you when you have to deal with King Helgi’s men. And I will see about having your berserkers that slew him done away with, as soon as I can find lads bold enough to do it for me and their own renown.”

“You rant, Yrsa, and it’s empty, and well you know that,” Adhils said. “Supposing I let you go, where would you seek to? Bring no threats against me or my berserkers, for this you will have no gain of. But I will make good with rich gifts the slaying of your father, with treasure and the best of lands, if you like.”

The queen departed, to return in a while and stonily accept his offer. Some wondered why she did not, instead, try to reach King Hroar in Denmark. Their fellows thought belike she had a threefold reason. She, daughter and bride of King Helgi, would not flee like an outlaw and come like a beggar. Nor would she forego the washing and laying out of him, the closing of his eyes, the binding of hell-shoes onto his feet, with her own hands, and seeing that he and his followers got a burial worthy of them and that honors would ever after be paid at the howe. Nor would she give up hope of revenge; already it was plain that Hroar would not take any.

None saw the queen glad thereafter. The unfriendliness in the hall was worse than before. After trying once, Adhils no longer shared a bed with her. As often as she saw a chance to do so, she went straight against his will. Doubtless he kept her only because of her kindred, her Swedish following, and her dowry.