Odin’s Child (25 page)

“We're Christ's soldiers here.” He threw out both arms to embrace us all. “We fight God's war. No food in the camp, they say? But didn't Our Lord multiply the loaves and fishes? He will provide. They say we're too few? How can that be when Saint Michael and his angels fight at our side? Bishop, there are plenty in Nidaros who love us, are there not?”

“Indeed, King, there are, and eager to join your cause.”

What game was Grimkel playing? Was it possible he believed this? He was doing his king no service with this fable.

“Exactly what these brave men have just told me,” cried Olaf, indicating us. “Rowed like demons to be first to bring me the news. Half a hundred ships or more behind you, eh?”

Believing in this fiction, I realized, he would wait here, expecting reinforcements from day to day, while his enemies concentrated their forces. When battle came, it would be a massacre.

“King,” I said, “you mistook our words, perhaps. We are not the vanguard of any fleet. Some may come out to join you, but don't expect many. Perhaps the bishop heard only what he wanted to hear.”

Everyone—Grimkel and Kalf, Ogmund, the skalds, and Olaf, most of all—looked at me as if I'd just pissed in a chalice. The one exception was Bjorn the Marshall. Behind Olaf's back, he nodded at me ever so slightly. He knew I was right.

“Hah!” Olaf exploded in laughter. “Bjorn, you hear that? This stranger offers to tell us our business. He informs me that my people love me not. You disappoint me, stranger, I did not expect to find weak faith in one of your nation.” He came and stood face-to-face with me, his unblinking
blue eyes looking deep into mine.

“I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, King, but if no one else will tell you—”

His heavy hands gripped my shoulders so that I could feel the pressure of his thumbs through my armor. Compared to Olaf, Snorri-godi was a puppy.

“Stranger,
my
tidings are brought by angels from the lips of Almighty God. They whisper in my ear as I sleep. We are three thousand strong today. In a week's time, we'll be six. I have God's word on it. If any man here thinks God's a liar, let him leave now and show me his face no more. Now, you and I … you and I will pray later. You'll believe God's own voice, I hope? If not, you have no business with us.”

None of this, mind you, was said in a violent or threatening manner. Olaf was not a common bully—though one might argue he was an uncommon one. He simply held me and looked at me, and I felt as though I'd been turned upside down and shaken. I don't know how else to say it.

“Soon,” he ground his big fist into his palm, “soon, by Christ, we'll stamp these false jarls down. And these heathen farmers—we'll break their bones and grind 'em, flay 'em, and boil 'em. Soon, brothers, my banner will fly over Nidaros Town again! And before long, not a pagan will breathe in all this land of Norway. Damn my head, I will either baptize 'em or blind 'em—they can have their choice. For what right has a demon worshipper to look upon God's firmament?”

A chorus of ‘Ayes' from all around.

At that moment, a messenger arrived to say that the king's half-brother, Harald, was demanding again to take his place in the war council. Now Olaf's eyes turned ugly. He pulled the messenger to him by the front of his shirt. “He demands? Of
me
? That unnatural weed! I have told my half-brother once, I have told him twice, and I will tell him just once more, that I do not take counsel with runny-nosed boys. If he troubles me once again, I'll send him back to his mother. Tell him so.”

The messenger vanished.

“And now, friends, on your knees before God.” Olaf smoothed his features into gentleness. “I intend to kneel here all this long night through, as I have done many a night before—and I will love any man who stays with me. When tomorrow's sun rises, my friends, you will see a thousand men marching under Christ's banner to our aid. You have your king's
word upon it. Does any man doubt it?”

No one doubted it. It was not their business to doubt. It was their business to die beside their king, which in all probability they would do, if the past was any guide.

Obediently, they dropped to their knees and folded their hands under their chins. Among them was Ogmund Pot-Belly and, to my sorrow, Kalf, with a look in his eye as though he were in Heaven already—a change of habitation I hoped to prevent, though damn me if I knew how.

As soon as their backs were turned, I slipped away.

There was nothing to be done for the moment. I was angry, worried, and hungry. Hunger, for the moment, took precedence. I hefted the beer keg and judged there was enough left in it to trade for a few mouthfuls of food.

With the keg on my shoulder, I followed along a muddy brook that wound through the camp, looking for a meal. Men who had only water to drink followed me with their eyes. It was strangely quiet in that camp. No one joked, few even talked over their scant dinner. This army's humor had run out with its rations long ago.

The brook led me out toward the edge of the camp, half way up the ridge, where fires glowed among the tree trunks in the gathering dusk. There, at last, I caught a whiff of roasting meat and followed my nose until I found the source. Behind some underbrush, three men crouched round a fire where a pair of scrawny fowls sizzled on a spit.

“Hello,” I said, “will you have company?”

They leapt up, nearly knocking the chickens into the coals, and made ready to fight for their dinner.

“Gently, friends, gently. I have a cask of ale here to share.”

With wary looks they stood back and motioned me to approach. They were an unlovely bunch—their clothes more hole than cloth, and their faces a few shades dirtier than most men's. The smallest of the three, a red, ferret-faced man with quick eyes set close together, did most of the talking for them. He was Bodolf the Noisy, he said, tapping himself on the chest, and these others were his mates, Tostig and Guthrum—all of them Swedes from Vastmanland. “Most of this army is Swedish, stranger, far from home and sorry for it,” said The Noisy, “am I right, mates?”

The mates agreed.

Grateful for a fresh audience, even of one, the Noisy told me their sad
history while preparations for our dinner were undertaken.

King Olaf, he said, had come through their country at the beginning of the summer, and their own king, who was some dear old mate of his, had loaned him some of his own hirdmen together with leave to sign on anyone else who cared to join up with him. “Well, I mean to say,” confided the Noisy, “he promises everyone a bit of roughhouse and plenty of loot at the end of it, don't he mates? So along we come, more fools us. Fetch up those birds now, will you Tostig, before they turn black altogether; there's a good lad.”

Tostig, squatting on his heels by the fire, snatched his fingers away with a yelp, and, sucking them loudly, gave his friend an angry look.

“Hasn't much brain,” The Noisy apologized.

“Guthrum, you do it.” Guthrum whipped a sharp, curved knife from his belt, hooked the two charred bodies safely from the flames, and set to carving them. “They don't go far for four,” he grumbled, wiping the blade against his leg.

“‘Deed they don't,” the Noisy agreed. “But then you're lucky to eat at all in this army, ain't you, mates?”

The mates nodded.

The Noisy proceeded to serve out the portions, saving the biggest for himself. “As long as we was on the Swedish side of the Keel, why, we could plunder as we liked for all Olaf cared. But come us to the Norway side,
his
country, and suddenly we must give up looting, says he, and beg politely of the farmers for our victuals like good Christmen that we are.”

“And means it, too,” Guthrum added morosely. “It's worth your hands and nose to disobey him.”

“Well, let me tell you, stranger, that asking politely has met with small success. Still, we must eat, mustn't we? So we take our chances and scoop up a chicken or a hare wherever we can, for not everyone can live on ‘God will provide' as friend Olaf does. Mind you, there's plenty o' that—he and his bishop push it at you every morning, but it don't really fill a man up, does it?”

“No,” Guthrum agreed, “you get a bit peckish by noon.”

“Friends,” I smiled, “you don't talk much like Christmen.”

“Oh, we've been dipped,” replied The Noisy, “but I tell you”—his ferret's eyes narrowed—‘there's a-plenty here what haven't been and don't give half a damn for his priests and his Latin and what-not.”

“None of us do,” Guthrum agreed, reaching for the keg. “All we've had
so far is three weeks' hard climb up one side of the Keel and down t'other, and sleeping out under our shields every night, and a lot of promises that haven't been kept. There's men deserting every day. We won't stick it much longer.”

“Promises such as—?”

“Such as that his own people would flock to join him. Mighty few have. A few hundred, maybe, under his kinsman, Dag Hringsson, and a few hundred more that his half-brother—'Little Harald' as we call him—brought up from the south last week. There's a one for you, Little Harald, have you seen him yet? Well, he's hard to miss. Tall as a bleeding mast, he is—that's why we call him ‘Little'. Fifteen year old but carries himself like he had twice the age on him.”

“And,” added Guthrum, “if you ask me, there's no love lost between him and Olaf either. Keeps separate quarters on t'other side of camp, struts around the place like he was king himself. Talk is, he fights for his brother's throne just to have it nice and warm for his own precious ass one of these days.”

This fit well with what I'd already seen.

We concentrated on the food for a while. The two chickens quickly disappeared, and the keg went several times around.

“Ooh, this is prize stuff, this is!” The Noisy beamed, drawing his grimy sleeve across his lips. He was getting drunk. “Nidaros Town must be a lovely place judging by the looks of you, friend. Very handsome you are, very handsome indeed.” He ran a greasy thumb over the sleeve of my scarlet tunic. “New?”

“Not anymore.” I gripped his hand and bent it backward.

“Ouch! Hold on—hold on! We
are
touchy.” He massaged his wrist while looking reproachfully at me. “Didn't know we was having the bleeding nobility to dinner.”

“I'm not in the best of moods.”

“Well—no harm done.”

His two friends, who looked ready to spring at me, settled back on their haunches.

“I believe I will just have another sup of your ale, though, if I might. I do relish it.”

“Keep the keg,” I said, standing up, “and thanks for the conversation. Time for sleep.”

“Bed down here, if you like,” murmured The Noisy with a thin-lipped smile.

“No thanks.” Not and have my throat cut in the night for my clothes.

“Well then, 'til tomorrow, friend.”

What now? I wondered, as I picked my way down the ridge in the dark. Try to reason with Kalf? Tell him that Olaf is dreaming, that Christ himself couldn't put the spirit back in this army? At the moment I couldn't face the thought of it. And like as not, he and Ogmund were still praying with the king. Anyway, time enough tomorrow.

I chose a bit of empty ground, built myself a small fire, and rolled up in my cloak. Weary and depressed, I slept fitfully, half expecting my father might visit me in a dream, for if ever I needed help, it was now.

But he didn't.

The war horn's blare, shrill as the bray of a wild ass, shattered the dawn and sent clouds of meadow birds beating up in fright from the tall grass.

All around me, men sat up, knuckling their eyes and groping in the half-light for their arms. Bjorn the Marshall, a hard-bitten old warrior, scarred with the combat of many years, ran past me up the wooded ridge, shouting orders to the Swedes to move down to a position in front of the palisade on the king's left flank.

The jarls with a great force of heathen farmers—the word traveled from mouth to mouth—were reported by our scouts to be marching through the woods from the direction of Nidaros.

No one had looked for them so soon.

“Up, you Swedish oxen, up!” cried the Marshall, racing from campfire to campfire and striking right and left with the flat of his sword.

“Ouch! Here! Mind who you're hitting with that!” Faintly in the distance, I heard my friends of last night.

“How soon will they be on us?” called someone.

“Before the sun's well over the treetops,” answered the breathless Bjorn.

Less than an hour! I must find Kalf, talk to him … do something!

I ran down the ridge, making straight for the king's banner. If Kalf had spent the night praying with Olaf, I should find him there somewhere.

All around the banner was confusion. The Norwegians running this way and that to form the shield-wall around their king, while Olaf himself
stamped about, shouting orders that couldn't be heard above the general uproar.

He cut a splendid figure, though. Now, over yesterday's filthy tunic, shone a coat of mail that hung to his knees, cinched with a belt of heavy bronze rings. On his head was a gilded helmet, and from his shoulder a snow-white shield swung, embossed, like his banner, with a cross of gold. For a damned fool, he was a fine looking man, no denying it.

Calling Kalf's name, I shouldered my way through the massed ranks of spearmen until, at last, I caught sight of him and Ogmund behind the shield wall, standing in a mob of archers and stone throwers.

“Odd,” he cried when he saw me running toward him. “Thank God!”

I didn't let him finish. Hardly slowing down, I seized hold of his arm and pushed him ahead of me, “Kalf, follow me out of here, we're deserting this pack of lunatics while there's still time. Pot-Belly, you can do as you please.”