Hrolf Kraki's Saga (7 page)

The guardsmen had neither mail nor shields nor any arm better than a knife. They fueled the longfires within for light and broke up furnishings for clubs and rams. Some of the guests helped them. The rest were too befuddled, and only stumbled about gibbering and getting in the way.

In a rush together, as nearly as the narrow doorways allowed, the king’s men attacked. Most fell, speared or sliced or hewn down as they came. A handful, holding a bench between them, smashed through their foes and gained a clear space. Sævil’s folk surrounded these. One was a berserker, a shaggy giant upon whom the madness had fallen. He howled, foamed, gnawed his club which was a high seat pillar, and dashed forth heedless of cuts and thrusts into his bare flesh. His weapon crashed on a helmet. It rang and crumpled; the man beneath dropped dead.

Helgi broke from the line still guarding the door, and sped against the berserker.
“No—!”
yelled Sævil and Regin together, aghast. The atheling heard them not. He took stance, feet apart, legs bent and tautened, shield decking his body from just below the eyes, sword slanted back past his shoulder. After three years of planks and
sticks, it was as if these well-made things were alive. The club raged downward. He eased his right knee and thus swiftly moved that way. The blow smote merely the rim of his shield. That was enough to stagger him, and leave his left wrist sore for days afterward. But his blade was already moving. Across the top of the shield it whistled. Deeply it bit, into the berserker’s neck. Blood spurted. He toppled. For a small time he flopped, struggling to rise. Then he went empty and lay there in a widening pool.

Sævil hugged Helgi. “Your first man, your first man!” Regin hastened to the back of the hall.

Frodhi had not been in that doomed charge. He took his wife by the arm. “Come,” he said. “Maybe a way is still open.” They ran to the wellhouse. At its outer doorway stood Regin’s men and the sheriff himself.

“We Skjoldungs are not a long-lived breed,” said Frodhi, and returned.

The last king’s man died. The flames stood ever taller and ate their way ever further back along the roof. Walls caught. Heat hammered. The house thundered and flared. Helgi bawled in his uneven boy-voice: “Let women and servants, men who are friends to the sons of Halfdan, come forth. Quick, before too late!”

They were not many. Most hirelings, thralls, and beggars had slept elsewhere and were gathered terrified at the uneasy edge of firelight. A few crept out, and rather more yeoman guests, those who had not unforgiveably worked on Frodhi’s behalf. They babbled of how they had hoped for this wonderful day.

“But where is my mother?” Hroar called.

Sigridh came to the door. Pillars of flame stood on either side and above. “Hurry!” shouted Helgi. She stopped, cloak drawn tightly around the gown she had donned, and looked upon her sons.

At last she said—they could barely hear her through the roaring—“Well have you wrought, Hroar and Helgi, and everything good do I wish for you in all of your life to come. But myself, I forsook one husband after he was dead. Ill would they speak of your mother, my darlings,
did she forsake another husband while yet he lived.” She raised a hand. “Upon you, my blessing.”

She walked back into the hall.

The brothers shrieked and tried to follow. Men held them fast. The doorway crashed asunder. The roof began to fall in. Sparks drowned every star. The noise grew even greater. It smothered the weeping of Hroar and Helgi.

I

Jarl and sheriff took the athelings to Leidhra. There they called a Thing, and when men were gathered, they told what had happened. Standing on the high stone, the youths saw blades flash free, gleam aloft and bang upon shields, while the throng shouted to hail them its kings.

They in their turn promised to abide by olden law, give justice, and restore the lands which Frodhi’s gang had grabbed. They thanked their sister’s husband Sævil for good help, and likewise Regin their fosterfather, and the men of these; and they handed out gifts to many, taken from the great hall and storehouses which now were theirs.

Thence they traveled about Denmark with their two elders and a well-armed troop. In each shire they got themselves taken as lords.

On the way, Hroar asked Helgi if he wished to split the rule between them, one in Zealand and one in Scania. Regin tugged his beard and said, “I’m not sure that would be wise, remembering what happened before.”

Helgi flushed. “Never will I bear a spear against my brother!” he said. “We’ll dwell together and share all things.”

This would be at Leidhra. Since Scania needed a trusty man in charge, they bade Sævil be theirs. He agreed, moved thither with Signy and their children, and lived long in peace. Often he and his brothers-in-law guested each other; but on the whole, he is now out of the saga.

The new kings were very unlike. Hroar remained
small, albeit quick and deft. He was soft-spoken, not given to more show than he must put on, mild, friendly, and deep-minded. Helgi, though, grew uncommonly tall and strong, until he was reckoned to be about the mightiest warrior in the land. He was gustily merry when not crossed, openhanded, one whose house folk made excuses to seek because they knew how the food and drink and mirth would flow. He either dressed as roughly as the meanest smallholder, or in the costliest furs and stuffs, a dragon’s hoard of gold on his arms and about his neck. Against this can be set that he was headlong, short-tempered, unsparing of whoever thwarted his will, and too early restless when seated in council.

Some men felt Hroar was like the father Halfdan and Helgi like the uncle Frodhi, and dreaded a breach. But it never came. The love between the brothers stayed unshakeable while they both lived.

The first year they must keep moving, learning the ins and outs of their realm, binding its headmen to them. Thereafter was no reason to look for trouble from that quarter. Hroar settled down quietly to master the skills of kingship. Helgi trained himself in fighting and in the ways of the sea.

This was to a good end. As soon as weather allowed next year, he led warriors forth. Bands of robbers and nests of vikings had always harassed the land, and gotten worse under Frodhi. Helgi scoured woods and waters, going in with fire and sword, ax and noose; yeomen blessed his name. At first he fared under the guidance of experienced leaders. By fall they admitted that he had no further call on them.

He spent the winter in a cheery round of feasts, also in planning the summer’s faring. That was a cruise along as much of Jutland, Fyn, and other islands as he could make, trading, fighting, and scouting out these lands against a later day.

While Helgi was gone that year, Regin, now a jarl, came to Hroar. They went aside and spoke under four eyes, as the saying is. “I am unwell,” the king’s foster-father told him. “Ever oftener my heart pains me and
flutters like a bird trying to escape a cage. It would gladden me if, before I go hence, I can lay one more strong timber to the house of the Skjoldungs.”

Hroar gripped his hand. Nothing else was needful between those two.

He went on: “I’ve asked about, and sent men of mine to look. I think I’ve found you a wife, who’d not only bring a rich dower and stout friends. She’d be the right lady for you.”

“I’ve always done well to follow your redes,” said Hroar low.

She was Valthjona, daughter of Ægthjof, the chief jarl in Götaland and near kin to its king. Thus Hroar would gain spokesmen for himself in that realm between his own and the Yngling-led Swedes.

There went more talk, with faring of messengers and gifts. Ere Yule, Valthjona reached Leidhra. She was a big, good-looking woman, firm at need but otherwise kindly, shrewd and steadfast. She and Hroar dwelt together in happiness.

Soon after the Hammer had hallowed them, Regin died. Folk called that great scathe. The kings gave him burial in a ship laden with costly goods, and raised a howe which reared high above the Isefjord, as if trying to see where old Vifil had laid his bones. Aasta did not long outlive her man. She too got a mound and farewell gifts from her fosterlings.

Hroar said sadly, “Now we must lean on our own wisdom, such as it is.”

“If that fails,” answered his brother, “we have our strength.”

“Our great-grandfather owned more might than we do, yet he went under.” Hroar ran fingers through his thin new beard. They sat alone in a loftroom, with only a stone lamp to hold off night. The air was winter-bleak. “We’re safer eastward than erstwhile, thanks to Regin. But few are our kinfolk westward across the Great Belt.”

“Are you saying I should seek a wife of my own?”

“Well, we’d better begin thinking about it.”

“Hm. I’m young for that.”

“Not as we Skjoldungs go.”

From time to time in the following months, Hroar brought the matter up. Helgi put him off, usually with a jest. This was not because of shyness. Almost the first thing Helgi did when they came to Leidhra, after the slaying of Frodhi, was beckon a thrall girl to his bed. Since then, if he wasn’t at sea, he seldom slept alone.

“You’re breeding sons who may well bring down the kingdom in grasping after it,” Hroar scolded him.

“Oh, I’ve not had to take one on my knee and give him a name,” Helgi laughed. “I never keep a wench long enough. I send her back to work, or home with a gift if she’s free-born, and that’s that.”

“Still, you should have acknowledged children, not to speak of in-laws.”

“Let me be, will you?” And Helgi stalked from the house.

He brooded, however, until in the end he decided to astonish the world by showing how he could steer his own affairs—and, at the same time, do a thing which would make him famous far beyond Denmark. Therefore he sent spies out in secret. Openly, he gathered ships and men, promising a cruise come summer which ought to win wealth.

There was no dearth of younger sons glad to join him. After sowing season a big fleet rowed out of Haven.

Hroar had spoken against this—“We’ve plenty of vikings and foemen close to home, without turning vikings ourselves”—but Helgi said, “Men won’t stay willing to go beneath our banners unless we give them a chance at real booty,” and would not be swayed.

His ships went down the Sound, their avowed aim to harry the southern Baltic coasts. Then at Mön, camped ashore, he told his skippers that first they would turn west. After he broached his wish, a few said it was too reckless. But they were shouted down and soon gave in. Remember, these were young men. Helgi himself had but sixteen winters.

II

The Saxons began in the neck of the Jutland peninsula. Like all Northland folk other than Finns, they speak a tongue the rest can understand. As their numbers waxed, they spilled forth until they had overrun realms from the Elbe to the Rhine—and Britain as well, along with their Anglic and Jutish kinsmen. A few clung to the old country.

One such kingdom was on the island of Als between Flensborg and Aabenraa Fjords. Its masters stemmed from both Odin and Frey, though they also had blood in them of the Wendish tribes who dwell eastward beyond Ironwood and talk like neither Danes nor Finns. Though doughty, they lacked great numbers of men and must plight faith and pay scot to the kings of Slesvik on the mainland.

The last of these royal underlings hight Sigmund. He married a daughter of his overlord Hunding. She bore him a girl-child they named Olof, but no sons who lived past her own early death. This led Sigmund to raise the girl rather like a boy, take her on hunts, teach her weapon-play, tell her of warlike doings, let her listen while he talked with men. She grew harsh and haughty, scorned womanly skills, sometimes even went about carrying shield and byrnie, sword at belt and helm on head.

Her father reached no high age either. When he died, her grandfather King Hunding of Slesvik feared a struggle for the seat which might lead to a breakaway from him. Therefore he pressed the Alsmen to take Olof for their queen. This was not wholly unheard of among Saxons; besides, the wiser chieftains agreed it was better than uproar. So it was done.

Later Hunding died and
his
realm fell into disorder. Cunningly playing sides off against each other, Queen Olof became able to do what she wanted. Taking a man was not among those things. She was reckoned the best match in the North—if only because this island was well-
placed for war and trade—but every suitor she sent away, and not very politely either.

Her own folk did not like her much, finding her overbearing and niggardly. Still, she was not bad enough to rise up against, bearing in mind that she was the last of their royal house and hence surely under the ward of her forebears the gods.

Matters had stood thus for several years when Helgi’s craft turned prows toward her kingdom.

He had learned that she spent her summers on the eastern shore of the island. There she kept a dwelling, less a hall than a lodge and some outbuildings, the Little Belt before it and miles of greenwood behind. It was a stead where she could hunt, which she loved, and seldom have to give outsiders food or gifts, which she cared little to do.

The house stood on a bluff looking widely over strand and water. Thus she reckoned on warning of ships in time to send after help or, at worst, flee down the road inland. Helgi lay to behind Lee Island across the Belt and waited for a fog. At that time of year he soon got it. The fleet crossed in single file, men stealthily rowing. Oft-times in that thick, dripping grayness, a steersman in the stern of one craft could not see the lookout in the bows of her follower. Ropes linked them. In the lead went the king. For pilot he had a fisherman who knew well every tide, current, skerry, and bight of these straits. They made landfall almost at their goal. Helgi sent warriors ashore and then cast anchor below the bluff

The fog lifted quite suddenly toward evening—and there were those lean hulls, ablink with mail and spears, while armored men loafed grinning around the edge of the woods. They made no threat; and the mast of the foremost ship had been raised to bear at its top the white shield which betokens peace. Yet the queen was boxed in and outnumbered beyond hope.