Hrolf Kraki's Saga (26 page)

Harder was to hold his men at rest. Mostly he found ways. Each owned something, be it land or ships, that he must often see to. Each had a leman nearby to keep him snug, and many now slept in their own houses near the hall. The king got them to practice all kinds of games and crafts; and this they came to do ably and proudly.

Whatever they undertook, Bjarki was always the best at it. He became the dearest to the king, who in the course of time gave him twelve great farmsteads scattered around Denmark—and, at last, his daughter Drifa to wife. They were a happy pair, the redbeard and the stately fair-braided young woman; folk said they looked like Thor and Sif.

Hrolf himself stayed unwedded. Bjovulf being dead and Götaland in upheaval, there was no real match for him anywhere in the Northlands—save maybe in Svithjodh, where King Adhils would hardly let him make an alliance. “Besides,” he said once to Bjarki, “I’ve had too much to do for a woman to be more to me than a bedmate.” The marshal thought he heard wistfulness.

None of this came about overnight. It took five years
from the time when Bjarki first rode through Leidhra gate; and hard was the swordplay. Toward the end, things went faster. The Jutish kinglets and headmen saw no hope of holding out. Moreover, they and those they led came to understand that whoever owned Hrolf Helgisson their overlord, got things which far outweighed what he asked of them.

They got peace. No longer might a neighbor chieftain take it into his head to come killing, burning, looting, raping, enslaving; and did outlanders seem like a threat, the High King in Leidhra could whistle up more warriors, more skilled and deadly, than anybody cared to meet. At first the crows gorged on hanged outlaws, the gulls on vikings washed ashore. Later these birds went hungry. The farmer and fisherman harvested free from dread; the merchant who had a venture in mind, the settler who wanted to clear new land, dared plan it.

The High King was just. The poorest old granny might speak to him as he rode around in the Denmark he had made, and be sure of a patient ear. The haughtiest underking, jarl, or sheriff must answer for every wrongdoing. Yet Hrolf was no harsher than he must be. In judging a quarrel, he tried as far as he was able to bring men together. “If you give a little as well as gain a little,” he would say, “it does not make you the less. Rather, it means that after you are dead, folk will be glad to remember your name and offer at your howe.”

Trade spread like friendly wildfire. Any islander, Scanian, or Jute could fare to the markets and dicker for what the skippers were bringing in. This was more than goods; it was arts, crafts, skills hitherto unknown, it was news and sagas and staves and songs from abroad, to lift the soul out of the narrow paddocks of home.

Thus when Hrolf Helgisson had been thirty-five years upon the earth, he steered a kingdom second only to Svithjodh in size, and far more rich, happy, and outward-looking. Mighty as a summer sky, his peace roofed it in; and to none did he give grounds for weeping, save those few who were left that hated, and one afar in Uppsala who loved him.

I

In the last year that Hrolf spent building his kingdom, things went like carpentry. Some men grumbled at getting no fights. Bjarki was not among them; he had no need to show off his manhood or win booty. Nonetheless he grew more and more thoughtful, and this went on after he had come home.

Huge was the feast that Yule Eve in Leidhra. The hall was loud not only with warriors but with many guests: scot-kings, jarls, sheriffs, and yeomen from widely across the realm, as well as outlanders wintering in Roskilde. Crofters, beggars, and gangrels fared better than they would have done as heads of most chiefly households. It was a sorrow to Hrolf that his brother-in-law Hjörvardh and sister Skuld had stayed away. In everything else he was glad and prideful.

The skalds chanted their old lays about his forebears, their new ones about him, and he had no lack of rings to break for their reward, nor of goodly weapons and costly garments to bestow on other friends. The longfires leaped and rumbled, the rushlights burned clear, to fill the air with warmth, sweet smell of juniper boughs, sheen off gold, silver, copper, and polished iron. The graven figures on pillars and panels seemed to stir, as if reaching out of their shadows to join the mirth. Talk, laughter, clash of horns and cups together, rolled under the roof like surf. The benches were crammed with lords and ladies, a rainbow of colors, a star-glitter of jewelry. To and fro scurried the servants, dodging hounds which lolled about chewing bones and thumping tails. The tres
tle tables had been cleared away. Ox, boar, deer, sheep, swan, grouse, partridge, whale, seal, tunny, flounder, cod, oyster, lobster, bread, butter, cheese, sausage, leeks, apples, honey, nuts, these and much else were now well-filled bellies and lingering savors. The real drinking was under weigh: beer and ale of different brews, swart or fair; mead, thick and sweet or light and lively; wine, from Danish berries or Southland grapes. Already some heads were finding it as noisy inside the ears as outside them. Yet no word had been spoken save in fellowship.

Beaming, King Hrolf looked to right and left and said, “Much strength has here met in one hall.” He leaned toward Bjarki, who sat unwontedly quiet, his wife Drifa at his side. (Beyond her, Hjalti and a maid on his lap were having a gleeful tussle.) “Tell me, my friend, do you know of any king like me, who rules over men like these?”

“No,” said the Norseman, “I do not. Your work will never be forgotten.” Then, slowly: “I do think one thing is left which breaks down your royal honor.”

Taken aback in his happy mood, Hrolf asked what that could be.

Bjarki gave him look for look and answered weightily: “What demeans you, lord, is that you do not fetch your inheritance from your father out of Uppsala, the hoard which King Adhils unrightfully keeps.”

Svipdag, to left of the high seat, leaned past Hrolf’s leman. The single eye suddenly burned in his gaunt, scarred face.

Hrolf could not gainsay that it shamed him to be thus treated, and therefore threatened him. What he spoke aloud was: “It would be hard to get hold of it. For Adhils is no honorable man. Rather is he skilled in witchcraft, evil, sly, ill thought of, and the worst there is to have to do with.”

“Even so,” Bjarki said, “the most seemly for you, lord, would be to demand your due, and sometime seek out King Adhils and find how he answers.”

Hrolf sat still a while before he said, “A great goal is this you have named; for I have my father to avenge.”
He glanced at Svipdag. “Adhils is the greediest and crankiest of kings, so let’s have a care.”

Bjarki chuckled, or did he growl? “I would not scorn someday to learn what kind of fellow he is.”

Svipdag breathed: “I promised when I left there, I’d visit them again. Lord, the queen would help us.”

“We’ll talk further of this,” Hrolf said. For the rest of the evening he had to work at being merry.

Drifa whispered to Bjarki: “You will go. I know you will.”

“I believe it,” he nodded, more content than hitherto.

She gripped his arm. “Always you go, you men. My mother, you remember … my father saw her married off to a yeoman, and she bore her husband a son who fell in holmgang … she said to me, it seemed like yesterday she laid him in his crib, and now she was laying him in his grave.” Her gold-bedecked head lifted. “Go you must, Bjarki, because you want to. But oh, come back! I have not had you very long.”

Busy though the king was, during the next few weeks he spent a good deal of time speaking in secret with knowledgeable men, drawing plans and making ready. “If we’re slow,” he warned, “Adhils is sure to get wind of our intention and thus time to build something nasty. Traveling while winter is on the ground and few wayfarers about, we may be able to keep ahead of any word of us.”

“Why not go by sea?” asked Bjarki.

King Hrolf frowned. “That was no lucky road for my father.”

“Too risky this time of year, along that coast of uncounted islands and skerries,” warned Svipdag. “Any sudden storm could dash us ashore; and I’m not sure but what King Adhils could raise one.”

Hence Hrolf’s only rowing was across the Sound to Scania. He gave out that he wanted to ride around and see how that part of his land was doing. To make this look true, as well as to go speedily and to leave plenty of strength in his newly-made realm, he took no great
troop along. There were his twelve chief warriors, the twelve berserkers, and a hundred guardsmen.

They went on the best of horses, leading ample remounts and packbeasts. The garb they wore was thick against cold, of the finest furs and gaily dyed stuffs. Hrolf and the dozen captains each bore a hawk on his shoulder, so well trained that hood and jesses could be left off, to make a still better show. The king’s was named High-breeks, a gyrfalcon, big and mettlesome, his eyes like those golden shields that are said to light the halls of the war-gods. Alongside loped Gram, a giant red hound which had pulled down wolf, elk, boar, and man.

Where Scania faded into Götaland, the Danes struck north. This East Göta country was rugged, thickly wooded and thinly peopled. They would often have to sleep out, rolled in bags upon chopped-off boughs. To make the more haste, they would not hunt, but live off what dry food they had along. They thought nothing of that, and of their faring is nothing to tell until one dusk when they came upon the lonely garth of a yeoman.

II

This was a surprise. They had seen no spoor of the plow thereabouts. Meager snow decked a clearing walled by evergreens and roofed by a low overcast. The house ought to have been easier to make out. It seemed to stand in deep shadow, itself another darkness which looked neither small nor great. The air hung chill, blotting up hoofbeats, voices, clink of metal, squeak of leather, sighs of weary beasts. Breath smoked dim.

Clearer to see was the man who stood outside, save for his face. A broad-brimmed hat cast that in murk. Beneath flowed a long gray beard. He was very tall, wrapped in a blue cloak, and carried a spear.

The king reined in. “Greeting, fellow,” he said. “Fear not if we camp on your land. We mean no harm.”

Deep tones answered: “You need not sleep in the weather. Spend the night under my roof.”

“It would ill become me to do what my men can’t.”

“I meant all of you.”

Hrolf blinked in astonishment. “You’re a bold one! Can you really afford that? We’re not few, and it’s not for a smallholder to take us in.”

The yeoman laughed in a way that recalled wolves baying. “Yes, lord. But I’ve now and then seen just as many men coming to where I was. You shall not lack for drink this evening, or for whatever else you may need.”

The king felt it would be unfitting to say other than: “We’ll put our faith in that.”

“You are welcome in truth,” said the yeoman. “Follow me.”

He led them behind the house. There they found a well-timbered building of a size to hold their beasts. Apart from hay and water troughs, it stood empty. The old one said it was too dark within for any who did not know his way around, and he would himself stall the horses and see to them. This went oddly fast.

“Who are you, yeoman?” asked the king.

“Some call me Hrani,” he answered.

Hrolf wondered at that, for the name is not common. His uncle Hroar had used it when hiding from King Frodhi. Even more did he wonder when he trod into the house he could so poorly see. The room beyond the door was as long and brightly lit as a hall, though as forsaken as the stable had been. Runes were cut in the walls.

“There’s something uncanny here,” Bjarki muttered to Hjalti.

The younger man shrugged. “Better than outdoors.”

Hrani bade them sit down. Had the trestle tables already been set up, trenchers of hot swineflesh, cups full of mead? Did Hrani himself, never taking off his hat, serve them as swiftly as he had done the horses? Strangest in their minds afterward was the dreamlike way in which they took this guesting. At the time, most of the men soon grew drunk and cheerful, swore they had hardly ever come upon a finer place, and shoved their wonder aside.
Hrani sat by Hrolf. They and a few who gathered around spoke together. The king named himself and his errand. The yeoman nodded and gave counsel about the best way from here to Uppsala. Svipdag asked how he knew this, forasmuch as smallholders seldom go far from where they were born. “Though I am aged,” Hrani said, “I wander widely.”

“How can you live in this house by yourself?” asked Bjarki.

“I am not by myself tonight, am I?” answered Hrani with his wolf-laugh. “I have guests oftener than you think, as well as strong sons who don’t happen to be here. Now as for your road—” He went on to tell them things they had never known about this land and those who dwelt in it. From there he led the talk to happenings aforetime. Never had they heard tales better told; and many were the wise saws and ringing staves which he threw in. It seemed to them this was indeed a deep fellow.

But they had ridden throughout a hard day. Soon weariness overcame them, helped by the noble mead they had drunk. Hrani bade them stretch out on benches and floor. He did not stay in the room. The fires died down.

The king and his men awoke sometime in the middle of the night. Only banked coals were left in the trench, barely enough red light to fumble by. It was so cold that the teeth chopped in their jaws. They sprang up, undid the bundles they had brought in from the packhorses, and put on more clothes and whatever they could get hold of—save for Hrolf and his chief warriors, who made do with what they already wore. Everyone froze until dawn came, and Hrani bringing wood to throw on the embers.

Then asked the yeoman: “How have you slept?”

“Well,” grunted Bjarki.

The yeoman turned an eye on the king, bleaker than the winter dark had been. He said dryly, “I know your guardsmen felt it was rather cool here last night; and it was. They must not suppose they can withstand what King Adhils in Uppsala will lay on them, if they took this so ill.” Sternly: “If you would save your life, send home
half your following; for it will not be by numbers of men that you win over King Adhils.”