Hrolf Kraki's Saga (34 page)

Hrolf Kraki’s red-gold mane burned amidst firelit shadows. “Never shall that be,” he answered. “I owe too much to those who have trusted me. Hearken, and bear back this word I give to my guards.” He raised his voice. “Let us take the best drink we have,” he called, “and be merry and see what kind of men are here. Let us strive for only one thing, that our fearlessness live on in memory—for hither indeed have the strongest and bravest warriors sought from everywhere about.” To the messengers: “Say to Hjörvardh and Skuld that we will drink ourselves glad before we take their scot.”

When this was told the queen, where she sat in her tent on her witching stool, above a blaze which made a cauldron seethe, she was quiet for a time. At last she breathed, “There is no man like King Hrolf, my brother. A shame, a shame—” Sorrow flickered out and she said, altogether bleak: “Nevertheless we will make an end.”

So the king’s men sat in friendship and good cheer. Bjarki, Hjalti, and Svipdag showed for their different reasons a sadness which they tried to keep from spreading. The rest talked of olden days, and bragged of what they would do, and praised their king; and he was the blithest in that whole house.

Dawn came across the winter land. Hrolf Kraki and his men took their weapons. Forth they went, out of the gates of Leidhra.

III

Clouds had arisen. Away from the stockade wall, earth rolled dun, thinly white-streaked, under a sky the hue of dull iron. The air was frosty but windless. Not much color was in the troop of King Hjörvardh. Even its banners seemed murky. That was a mixed lot he had gathered wherever he could, among them outlawed murderers and robbers, evil to see beneath the helmets he had gotten for them. Against this, king Hrolf’s band wore cloaks of all bright shades; his own was as red as living flame. Birds and beasts romped over the many-toned standards of his captains, that were spaced along the swine-array on either side of his own green ash tree on a golden field.

“Forward!” he cried. The sword Skofnung flew free. His followers made deep-throated answer, lur horns dunted, war-hounds bayed. As one, the fighters from the burg moved toward their foes. Though badly outnumbered, they were not few. Along their ranks went that ripple as of wind across rye, which bespeaks a peak of training.

Arrows whistled aloft. Spears flew gaunt between them. Slingstones thudded on shields. Hrolf shifted from a walk to a trot to a run. His band came with him like a part of his flesh.

They crashed upon Hjörvardh’s lines. Iron sang. A man smote at Hrolf with a halberd. The king was less tall and more slender than him. Yet the king was not halted. He took that booming blow on his shield while his blade leaped and shrilled. The man went down. Hrolf sprang over him and hewed a way deeper into the rebel ranks. On his right rang Hjalti’s Goldhilt, on his left thundered Svipdag’s ax. The hound Gram tore at legs, jumped at necks. Overhead the hawk Highbreeks soared on shining wings.

Stroke after stroke resounded on helm, shield, hauberk, on into meat and bone. Spears and arrows went thick
above. Men sank, pierced, slashed, spurting forth blood. Over them trampled the onrushing warriors from Leidhra. Horsemen on the flanks, who sought a weak spot to guide an attack, found naught but a human storm, or their own deaths.

Hjalti the High-Minded chanted in glee: “Many a byrnie is now in tatters, many a helmet cloven and many a bold rider stabbed down from the saddle. Still our king is of good heart, as glad as when he cheerily drank ale, and mighty are the blows of his hands. Like no other king is he in the fray, for meseems he has the strength of twelve, and no few hardy wights has he already slain. So now King Hjörvardh can see that the sword Skofnung bites; now it sings high in their breasts.”

Laughing, calling to his men, red-splashed but himself hardly touched, Hrolf Kraki led the way on. Slowly the rows before him broke apart, scattered to right and left where they did not fall or flee. Stern was that strife. Had the numbers of the two sides been more nearly even, it would have ended then and there.

But the Leidhra lord had not enough to overrun the enemy host. Though he clove through its middle, its flanks were unscathed. Beneath the banners and horn-hoots of their captains, these moved aside in an order not much shaken.

There was nothing Hrolf’s folk could do but catch their breath while they waited for the onslaught. Svipdag roared at some who were over-eager: “Get back where you belong! They
want
us to wear ourselves out, chasing after them!

“However,” he added starkly to his master, “if we can’t break them soon, if we can’t get to yonder tents where Queen Skuld is brewing her spells, we’ll have worse to fight against than men. Those trollish things we glimpsed may be shy of daylight, but she’ll do something about that if she gets time, the witch.” His single eye smoldered across the angry dead and the writhing, groaning wounded, to the lines which rallied for a new battle.

Hjalti mopped sweat from his face, looked around and
said in astonishment: “Why, where’s Bjarki? I thought … he must have been our right-hand anchor … there’s his banner, his men, but I don’t see him anywhere.”

His mirth left the king. He turned about, and blinked when he spotted little Vögg nearby. The Swedish youth had scrabbled up a leather doublet, a rusty old kettle-helm, and a butcher’s cleaver. His knees knocked together. Blood trickled from his bitten lips. “Come here!” Hrolf hailed.

Vögg obeyed. “You should have stayed back, lad,” said the king.

“I … I am your man too, lord,” he answered. “I am!”

“Well, you can be a runner, then. Go find out what’s happened to Bodhvar-Bjarki. Has he been slain or captured or what? Somebody will have seen—a man of his size, his ruddy beard.”

Vögg scuttled off. Hrolf gazed after him. “I don’t think he shudders from fear,” the king murmured. “There’s a heart in that thin breast.”

Hjalti gnawed his mustache, stamped feet and slapped arms, trying to keep warm during a wait which felt endless. Would the fight never start again? The first clash had taken no small part of this shortest day in the year. He failed to find the sun behind the grayness that hid her.

Vögg returned. “Lord,” he panted, “none have seen anything of Bjarki. Not a thing since w-w-we left the hall.”

“How can this be?” broke from Hjalti. “How can he spare himself and not come near the king … he who we thought was the most fearless we had?”

King Hrolf clapped him on the shoulder and said: “He must be where he can help us best. His will could be for nothing else. See to your own honor, go forward and scoff not at him, for none of you can measure yourselves against him.” He added in haste, “I slander nobody, though; you’re all outstanding warriors.”

Hjörvardh and his captains had been haranguing their own men and getting them into better order than hitherto. Now the mass of them rolled at the defenders. Hrolf raised a new shout and led his folk ahead.

Once more spears and arrows whistled, once more came shock and clang and hoarse yells. Meeting foemen who had not had to do battle before, they of Leidhra might have been in an ill case. Yet they cut and beat their way on. Nothing could stand before them.

For ahead of their wedge, close to their king, went a great red bear. Each blow of his paw sent a dead man to earth; his jaws ripped; rising, he hauled riders from their seats or slew the very horses; and upon him, no edge would bite.

Few on either side could see this, so closely were the fighters crowded together. Hrolf’s folk, who suffered not from the bear, knew for the most part only that the ranks against them were giving ground anew. Lustily they hewed, with thought for nothing else. Meanwhile terror began to spread through Hjörvardh’s gang. He, mounted and some ways off to overlook the field, spied what happened. He called for his captains to sound retreat before their followers should bolt.

Hjalti himself had been little aware of the beast. He was too busy warding and smiting. Across weapon-clash, shields, helmets, faces that hated him, he could not make out what the bear really did. Dimly he supposed it was a sending of Queen Skuld’s, which however could not help her while daylight lasted.

Mainly, through the hammering and howling, he brooded on Bjarki, his more than father—on the undying shame that would be Bjarki’s, that he was not here this day.

When the foe melted away afresh, when he saw there would be another halt in the strife, Hjalti ran. Back to the burg he went, overleaping the dead and dying, setting foot in pools of blood where they steamed, frightening off the carrion birds which had settled at the rear. Through open gates he dashed, down empty streets, past barred doors and shuttered windows behind which women and children crouched in dread, until he reached the house of Bjarki.

Here no latch stopped him. He flung the door wide and burst into the room beyond. It was cold and winter-dark
, hardly touched by a small hearthfire. He glimpsed Bjarki’s wife, Hrolf Kraki’s daughter Drifa, in the shadows of a corner, her children close around her. On a bed lay the man. He wore a byrnie, but his sword was sheathed and he stared straight upward.

The woman cried out and moved to block Hjalti. He brushed by her unheeding, grabbed one broad shoulder, shook it and screamed:

“How long must we wait for the first of warriors? This is unheard of, that you’re not on your feet, using your arms that’re strong as a bear’s! Up, Bodhvar-Bjarki my master, up or I’ll burn this house and you inside it! The king’s in danger of his life, for our sake! Would you wreck the good name you’ve borne so long?”

The Norseman stirred. He turned, sat, rose to loom over his friend. Heavily he sighed, before he answered:

“You need not call me fearful, Hjalti. I have not been afraid. Never have I fled from fire or iron; and today you’ll see how I still can fight. Always has King Hrolf called me the foremost of his men. And I’ve much to repay him for, that he gave me his daughter and twelve rich garths and every kind of treasure besides. I fared against vikings and robbers; I warred the length and breadth of the Denmark we built with our blood; I went against Adhils, and Agnar I slew, and many another man—”

His words, which he had almost crooned as if in dream, broke off. His gaze sharpened on Hjalti, who was stabbed by a sudden chill. Bjarki’s voice quickened:

“But here we have to do with more and worse witchcraft than ever before. And you have not done the king the service you think; for now it is not long till the end of the fight.” With a breath of kindliness: “Oh, you’ve done this unwittingly, not because you did not wish the king well. And none save you and he could have called me forth as you did; any others I would have slain.” Sadly: “Now things must go as they must. There is no longer any way out, and less help can I give King Hrolf than I did before you came.”

Hjalti bent his head, knotted his fists, and said through unshed tears, “Bjarki, you and he have always stood highest before me. It’s so hard to know what one ought to do!”

The Norseman put coif and helmet on his head. Drifa came to him. He took her hands in his. “It hurts that I can no more look after you,” he said. “Ward well the children we got together.”

“With a father like theirs,” she told him, “they will need little help.”

He hugged them too. Shield in his grip, another slung across his back to use when the first was beaten to ruin, he followed Hjalti out.

Day had started to dim. Bjarki trod before King Hrolf and said: “Greeting, my lord. Where can I best stand?”

“Where you yourself choose.”

“Then it will be near you.” The sword Lövi gleamed free.

A runner came to King Hjörvardh from the black tent where Queen Skuld squatted. He peered through dusk and saw no more of the red bear; nor was it ever seen again. Heartened, he told his captains to egg on their troops.

His host moved forward slowly and raggedly. They had taken frightful losses. Far fewer of the Leidhra men were down, and fierceness had not slackened in those who were left. Yet—maybe because they were still more afraid of the witch—the rebels went back to battle.

Alone and yet not alone, Queen Skuld cast her runes and chanted her staves. The fire flowed higher; things moved in the smoke and in the steam out of her cauldron.

Forth from the ranks of King Hjörvardh ran a hideous boar. Wolf-gray, huge as a bull, he made earth shake beneath his hoofs. His tusks flashed like swords. The sound of his grunting and squealing struck fear into the stoutest souls.

At him sprang the hounds of Leidhra. Baying and yelping, they ringed him in. He hooked his snout to right and left. Slashed, broken, the war-dogs soon lay heaped
around him. For a while Gram hung on his throat. At last the boar tossed him aloft, and as he came down gored him open.

Then onward the beast raged. From the bristles upon him, arrows began to fly. No shield would stop them. Before that sighing death, the guardsmen of King Hrolf fell in windrows. Gaps showed throughout their lines which could not be filled.

Svipdag whirled his ax on high. “Close in!” he bawled. “Have at that troll before it reaches the king!”

He sped forward. Over his head swooped the hawk Highbreeks. An arrow drove through the warrior’s left shoulder. He did not feel it. The galloping beast was well-nigh upon him. He kept his weapon moving, ready to cleave that grisly skull. Two ravens flew at Highbreeks. The hawk met them with beak and claws. Unscathed, they pecked him to death. The sight caught Svipdag’s one eye—only in a corner, but enough that he did not see how close the swine was. Tushes ripped into byrnie and belly. Flung heavenward in a cloud of blood, Svipdag’s body was long in falling.

The boar hit Hrolf Kraki’s array. Through and through it tore, swung about and gored.

It could not be everywhere. One wing it might crumple. The other went on. So did the middle, where flickered the swords of the king, of Bjarki, and of Hjalti.

Soon, however, the press broke everybody’s lines. The fray became man against man, shield-burg against shield-burg, ramping, swirling, striking, gasping, falling across reddened winter earth where twilight and cold grew ever deeper.