Odin’s Child (40 page)

In fact, with those nimble fingers of his, he pilfered eggs for us, which was all that saved us from starving utterly.

†

After each weary day, we lay, huddled body against body on the cold
earthen floor of our prison and dreamed of escape.

“Trolls take the place!” Kraki swore one night early in our captivity, down on his hands and knees, scratching in the dirt with his fingernails.

“Give it up,” sighed Starkad wearily. “Haven't we tried? Without some sort of tool…”

Kraki turned on him savagely, “We'll steal a tool—a hatchet, a knife. Thor's Billy goat, we could steal a knife, couldn't we?”

“Not until our jailers grow more careless than they have been.”

“Too late for me, I can't stick it. Captain,” he turned his anger on me, “I'm not made like you and these others. I won't be a dog in chains! I mean to run away tomorrow when we're in the fields, and if there's a brave man here, let him come with me!”

“Run where?” Ivar laughed bitterly. We might as well be on an island in the ocean, except that it's an ocean of trees. The Finns know their way in it, and we don't. They'd catch us before we went half a mile. And if we did reach another settlement, who's to say they would treat us any better? It isn't this shed that's our prison—it's the whole damned country!”

“But the sea,” cried Kraki, “that's
our
ocean. We've only to steal a boat…”

“Only that?” said Stig wearily. “Have you noticed, friend Kraki, how they guard the sea-gate day and night? And as for wriggling through the marsh that lies between the meadow and the shore, why, the sedge grows so thick you couldn't part it with a sword, and you'll meet some pretty snakes there, too.”

“Heh?” struck in Eystein Crickneck. He was an addle-brained youth whose head lolled permanently to one side as the result of his having fallen out of a tree as a baby. I had taken him on in Jumne for the sake of his uncle, who was an experienced hand.

“Heh? Snakes is it? A snake won't bite you, friend Stig, if you rub up your toes with butter and ashes, you know. Bless me, I never go a-walking but that I rub up my toes—and I've not been bitten yet.”

“Eystein Crickneck,” Stig answered dryly, “a man may be thought wise if he never speaks and comes inside when it rains. Take it to heart.”

There was a little laughter—most of it Eystein's, who always laughed the loudest at his own foolishness. And after that, silence.

At last young Bengt said, “Well, then, my God, what are we going to do?”

“You'll do what your captain tells you!” Einar snapped at him. “You
and Kraki and all. You'll bide your time and save your lives for a better day.”

I was glad to see that the Jomsviking, for all his talk of brave viking deaths, had a cannier side to his nature. Men who are determined to die like vikings usually succeed before they reach his ripe age. Einar Tree-Foot was a survivor. I liked him the better for it.

But Kraki answered him in a surly tone. “I want no wise words from the old fool who brought us to this.” He flung himself past Eystein and his fingers reached for Einar's throat.

“Enough of that!” I ordered, putting myself between them. “Kraki sit down and listen to me. We are a crew. What one does, all must do. Sooner or later they will make a slip, and we will strike. Until then watch and wait.”

I put as much conviction into this speech as I could manage, but truly, I hardly believed it myself. I could see despair growing in us, a little more every day. Soon it would turn to melancholy, in time to madness. More than a year had passed since my escape from Iceland. If this was to be the end of my adventure, I would have been better off to burn at home. “Wake up, Father Odin,” I spoke to the dark, “please, wake up and see us.”

Next morning, while we were working in the hay, Kraki made a dash for the trees. The guard who had been set to watch us saw him go, but made no hurry about sounding the alarm.

That evening they carried Kraki back. His head went up on a stake. His body they threw into the shed with us. From the looks of it a bear had gotten to him first.

To a man, we were frightened.

†

Then one day, when we had been prisoners for two weeks or three, we made a discovery: we were not alone in our captivity.

It was evening, and we were being fed our slops and sour beer, as usual, on the ground in front of our cell, before being shut up for the night. Even in the rain—it had been raining all day—we would not willingly go inside that stifling box. As we squatted there, picking the stuff over, a figure came squelching through the mud in our direction—not on a straight course but in a series of looping tangents, like a boat tacking against the
breeze. He came to rest, at last, in front of us, with a look of vague surprise on his face as though this were not at all the destination he had planned. Then, with a sudden twitch of his shoulders, he dropped down beside us.

“Turnips,” he said. “Not so rotted as they might be.”

Our heads snapped up as if yanked by invisible cords. We stared at him blankly.

“Like your quarters?” He smiled and winked as though this were some private joke that we all shared. “Know the inside of her like the palm of my hand. Used to be this was the sauna—what they call a steam bath here—until they built the bigger one closer to the new well. That's why she's put together tight as a boat's bottom—to keep in the heat, don't you see. Now it serves 'em for a lock-up.”

We burst out in a rush of speech—which seemed to alarm him so much that I thought he would run away. “No, no, friends, not so eager, not so eager.” He waved a skinny finger in our faces. “You know they aren't half pleased about me talking to you. Just you sit quiet. There, that's better.”

“But who are you?” I whispered.

“It
is
good to hear the old speech again, damned if it ain't.” He grinned, showing bad teeth. “You know, I feared I had lost it with no one to talk it to these thirteen years.”

“Thirteen,” murmured Bengt weakly.

The poor fellow lowered his watery eyes to the ground, while his narrow shoulders worked up and down in a constant motion—for this was a peculiarity of his that he seemed quite unable to control. His head, too, would take violent jumps to one side or the other as shudders ran through him. In fact, now I remembered seeing him before, trotting here and there about the place with his queer shakes and a lost look on his pinched and dirty, young-old face. Bits of straw in his hair, tattered clothes, and birch bark shoes as big as boats at the ends of his skinny legs, made him seem just another one of the peasants whose huts clustered within the wall.

“Maybe fourteen—maybe more,” he chuckled, settling himself on the ground with his legs tucked under him. “Name is Hrapp, though the Finns call me hullu—'fool,' as you might say in our words.”

That brought me up sharp. “You understand their speech?”

“Oh, yes. Talk it, too. The first few months I just kept my mouth shut and my ears open and pretty soon, why, damned if she didn't start making
sense to me. After that it come quick.” He laughed again and tapped his forehead with a skinny finger.

“And why do they call you fool?” said Stig, studying him with a careful look. “You aren't a fool, are you, Hrapp?”

“Ha, ha! Maybe yes and maybe no—but I must start my story at the beginning if you want to know all.

“There was fifty-six of us when they caught us. Brave lads, from Sodermanland in Sweden, off for a summer's harrying—like yourselves, as it might be? Well, you've seen how things go here. After a while there wasn't a one of us left alive but me. Shall I tell you why? It was learning their gabble kept me alive. Because the old woman—you haven't met the Mistress yet, old Louhi—she loves stories, just dotes on 'em. Any sort—stories about trolls and giants, kings and battles, just anything at all. They never sail far from home, these folk, and they know naught of the world outside. And I got to be a fair hand at putting stories into their words. Done it all these years—told every story I know a hundred times if I've told it once. But she never seems to tire of 'em, and she lets me live.”

“If you call this life,” muttered Ivar.

“Well, damn it, I like it better than watching the world go by from the top of a sharp stick. Though there was the time that I got fed up—for it is a grim place here.”

“We know,” I said.

“Oh no, friend, you don't know—you don't know….” His voice trailed off, and he stared vacantly, as though we had all suddenly vanished. Another great twitch of his head and shoulders brought him back to attention.

“It is a grim place here—and so I ran off to the woods one time. After a few days, though, wandering about, cold and starving, I come back. Didn't mind by then if they did whack my head off. Joukahainen was for doing it, too, but Louhi wouldn't let him. Instead he gave me a beating that near killed me—left me this dent on my forehead here, do you see it?

“Then they throw me down the dry well that's a trash pit now, over inside the old well house, cram me down in it with a skin of water and a bit of moldy cheese, throw a dead goat in after me and shut the trap. And there I sit, just me and the worms and the rats—big'uns, too, and as hungry as me.

“I don't know when it was that I begun to wail and throw myself
about—feeling the vermin all over me, if you see what I mean. Even tried to kill myself by holding my breath, but you can't, you know. And it was a long, long time before they pulled me out.

“I've been shaky in my ways ever since then, and they take me for a crazy man. But I don't complain. I've got the run of the place, sleep where I like, and nothing to do all day but tell my stories whenever Louhi takes the fancy. I'm luckier than most!”

It was she who ruled here, then—the bundle of rag and hair I had glimpsed that first morning and never seen again. I begged Hrapp to tell us more of her, though he was plainly unwilling to, glancing uneasily around him while a whole series of minor tremors ran through his body.

“She's a witch, I can tell you,” he said softly. “There's death in her mouth. She can sing herself into an eagle or a hawk, call down sun and moon, send the killing frost….”

Stig, who took such things lightly, snorted.

Hrapp shot him a frightened look. “It's the truth! Day and night she sits in the hall with her wizards, and they sing and sing till the place stinks with taika—what they call magic. Times like that she sends me away, and I wouldn't stay there if she was to beg me.”

While Hrapp talked, I stole a look at Glum. His face was in his hands, and he rocked back and forth, groaning. He had known it that first night, had felt the crippling magic all around that was deeper and blacker even than One-eyed Odin's.

“And she rules wide,” he went on. “This place they call Pohjola—North Farm, as we should say. It's the strong-place of her tribe. But she takes tribute from others too, all up and down the coast.”

“Alone?” I asked, “No husband?”

“There she is unlucky. He went a-hunting one day last winter and never come back. They found him in the woods, shorter by a head. But he was hardly worth the killing. Even while he lived, it was only her they feared. She did carry on, though, and buried him handsome.”

Stig looked up and caught my eye. “The barrow—”

“What? Oh, no, no, no,” Hrapp sounded almost offended. “No, they wouldn't treat you near so kind as they do if you'd rifled
his
tomb. No, Louhi put him where no man's hand will ever touch him.”

From where we sat, we could see over the roof of the hall to the barren, cone-shaped hill that had impressed me on our first morning here.
I followed Hrapp's gaze to it.

“All that for him?”

“Ask
nothing
about that.” He tore his eyes from it and glared at me with desperate anger.

“As you like.” I put up my hands and smiled until he seemed easier.

“And the Headsman, Joukahainen?” asked Einar. “He's her son, is he?”

“Of sons she hasn't any, though she loves him like a son. And some say,” he added slyly, “better than a son.”

“Friend Hrapp,” I broke in suddenly, for in my deadened brain a thought had begun to stir. “Hrapp, teach
me
to speak. I am a story-teller too.”

“What d'you say?” He eyed me narrowly. “My Old Woman wants no other story-teller.” He tried to draw away, but I held him fast by his ragged shirtfront.

“Stop, stop it!” he cried. “They'll see.” Now his eyes bulged with fear.

I gripped him tighter and commenced to shake him, while Stig and Einar and the others stared at me as though I had lost my wits.

“Now, mind me, Hrapp the Fool. I don't want your wretched office. I want freedom for my men and me and I'm powerless until I can speak. Help me and come with us—or else, rot here for thirteen years more.”

“You're the fool!” he cried. Spittle gathered at the corners of his mouth. “How will it serve you to talk to Louhi, eh? You think she'll let you go for that? Or Joukahainen? He has precious little conversation, has poor Joukahainen, except in the matter of heads!”

My other hand closed on his throat. “Say yes, Hrapp.” Across the stable yard, a guard stared at us. “Hrapp, they're watching. Say yes.”

“Yes—alright, yes.”

I pushed him back on his heels. The guard, unslinging his crossbow, started toward us.

“Now, Hrapp, quickly”—I smiled into the twitching face—“what shall we say to this curious sentry? Begin my lessons.”

Try as we might, we could not ignore our former shipmates, who were a mute audience to the daily round of our lives. At first they had regarded us from the tops of their wooden stakes with expressions of sleepy indifference or only mild surprise. But as the days passed into weeks, other emotions seemed to possess them. Their mouths drew back at the corners so that some appeared to be smiling in secret amusement, while others frowned or even screamed in silence. But this, too, changed in time, as the rain and the crows and the vermin cleaned them up, until, when a month had passed, there was not enough flesh left on them to interest a fly; and they had ceased to be our friends.