Odin’s Child (45 page)

With him came another whom Vainamoinen had summoned—Ilmarinen the Smith—a short man, squarely built and strong, with a shock of grizzled hair and sad eyes.

“Viikinki,” said this blacksmith, as we sat on the grass within a whispering circle of onlookers, “what do you know of our treasure?”

“Nothing,” I lied, “except what Ainikki told me—pretty-sounding words, but they left me no wiser. You could tell me more, I think.”

“I could, if I chose. I made it.”

“You? But she said it was ages old.”

“Children. If a thing happened before they were born it's as good as a thousand years ago.”

“She also said Louhi got it from you by some trickery.”

“Yes, Louhi.” What a sorrowful look in those eyes. “She was not always as you saw her, you know, not always a monster. She was a handsome woman once, sweet-voiced, white-armed, small-footed, deep-minded, and skilled in mysteries. Her husband was a sorry man.”

“Old friend, there's no need to tell a stranger this,” urged Vainamoinen gently.

“And the short of it is, I loved her. And to please her, I told her a secret. She loved secrets the way a child does; she had that quality about her. I showed her the sampo, still hot from the forge and heavy with magic. She looked, and she put her arms around my neck, wheedling and smiling, and said, ‘Handsome Ilmarinen, strong Ilmarinen, clever Ilmarinen, let me have the use of it for just a little while.' My friends, if anyone can be made wiser by the misfortune of another, then I am bound to tell this story, though it shames me. Put no faith in sweet words from witches!

“And so, she keeps it now. So much of my breath was consumed in the making of it, there can never be another one. It was meant to be a good thing, Viikinki—to serve us and make our lives easy. What it has become….” He broke off and spread his hands wide.

We were all quite still during the telling of this sad history, except for
Lemminkainen. He fidgeted and dug at the ground with the point of his hunting knife, and as soon as the smith had finished, gave a lowering look around him and said:

“Ilmarinen, with respect, I am tired of hearing about this thing. Its days were long ago, and too many men have died already for its sake. Let the old'uns pine for it if they like to. I doubt we'll ever see it again—nor do I much care. I care for nothing but to bring my sister home alive, for I have no other living kin. Now, tell me, you—what are you called?”

“Odd Tangle-Hair by some. Odd Thorvaldsson is my…”

“Viikinki will do. Tell me a plan, Viikinki, that doesn't promise her death before we ever get close enough to the sampo to spit at it. This is what gnaws at me.”

“Lemminkainen,” said one of his men, a dour fellow who reminded me of Brodd, “she could be dead already for all we know. Is it likely Joukahainen let her live for even one hour after he discovered the Viikinki gone? He only needs you to hope she's alive in order for his trap to work.”

“No,” I broke in, “I don't think so. I heard him vow in front of everyone what he would do to her while you looked on.” I repeated the Headsman's words as I had heard them that night at the feast.

Lemminkainen's face was a mask of stone. “What is your plan, then, Viikinki?” he asked, harsh-voiced.

I'd had plenty of time to think over my plan, and I knew how it could be done—provided my men were still alive. But when I told them what Hrapp had said to me, Vainamoinen and the others exchanged worried looks.

“Here, we're nearly through harvesting the barley already,” said Lemminkainen. “You were a long time getting here, Viikinki.”

“He is not to blame,” rumbled Vainamoinen. “Today we gather our fighters, and on tomorrow's dawn we will sail for Pohjola. If luck is with us, we will win back both the sampo and little Ainikki. If not—well, we will have drunk the beer of war, and that is no bad thing.”

“Spoken like a viking!” cried I—and instantly wished I hadn't. There were dark looks all around. They knew the viikingit—knew that we came to rob their graves and steal their women. I and my men had only been careless enough to get caught at it. If it were not that I held the key to Pohjola for them, they would happily have made a present of me to Louhi.

Lemminkainen looked me over with especial venom. “If we succeed,
Viikinki, what reward will you ask for your part in this?”

“To feed Joukahainen and his Mistress to the crows one piece at a time, friend Lemminkainen, and lift as much silver as we can carry away—that much we are owed for our pains. The rest is yours. And I'll ask you to find us our ship if it can be found, or give us another, and we'll part friends.” I said nothing about Ainikki.

This met with nods and murmurs of “well spoken,” but not from the Rover.

“Friends, you mean, until you come raiding us next summer.” He rose on one knee, and I saw his fingers tighten on the hilt of his hunting knife.

“Gently, now, gently.” Vainamoinen brought him down with his eyes. “I think we will be safe in trusting this young man's word, for if I had been as unlucky in his country as he has been in ours, I vow I would never go near it again.” His eye twinkled and a laugh rumbled up from deep in his chest.

Then, out of bits of bread, a cap and a belt, I built Pohjola in miniature for them on the grass, and laid out my plan.

We were interrupted presently by the shouts of more warriors coming across the meadow. They'd been trickling in all morning. These brought with them, slung on a pole, a fine, big bear, which they had killed along the way.

Everyone ran up to see, and greetings were shouted—to the bear as much as to the men, for a bear is the son of the god Tapio and nothing must be overlooked in making him welcome.

A chorus gathered round the men who carried him, singing:

Hail, honey-paws
,

Shaggy one, golden one
.

Come under our ridge-pole
,

Chubby-one, handsome one
…

Stretching him on the grass, they skinned him carefully, then folded the pelt and put it away. They cut the meat in chunks and put them to boil with lumps of salt in copper cauldrons.

Meantime, Vainamoinen, who, among other things, was a wizard, sang a spell over the bear's head to claim his powers for the folk, while he pulled its teeth and put them aside for safekeeping. Finally, the head was set high in the branches of an evergreen tree at the edge of the woods and the people sang farewell to Tapio's son and thanked him again.

It was a fine feast. Women and children from the nearer farms had come along with their men, and because the air was warm, we sat outdoors and dined on gobbets of bear meat with salmon and bread and plenty of ale to wash it down.

When we had eaten and drunk, Vainamoinen placed on his head a tall peaked cap, and sat down on a low stone in the midst of us. The last slanting rays of the autumn sun streamed through the branches of an ancient rowan that arched above him. Mothers hushed their children while he tucked his flowing beard in his belt and took up his kantele—so fragile a thing that he could have crushed it in his hands.

He brushed the horse-hair strings with his fingers and it sounded like birds and little bells. I had never imagined music so beautiful.

After a time, he handed over the instrument to another man and turned towards the slim youth sitting beside him, who was his apprentice in the art of yoiking. For this is their custom that, while one man plays, two men will sing together, sitting face to face, with knee pressed against knee and right hand holding right hand.

They sang for an hour or more—singing the seas to honey, as the Finn folk say, the hills to sweet cakes, and the rocks to hens' eggs. I wished it had been me sitting there. Could my father, I found myself wondering, could Black Thorvald have been to me as Old Vainamoinen was to that youth, if only the Christmen had not driven him mad? I found my eyes suddenly filled with tears.

A little girl crawled into my lap and fell asleep with her head against my chest. In the grass, crickets creaked. The sun went down.

Here in Ainikki's world, among the people she loved, watched over by her kindly gods, I felt myself, for the first time that I could remember, deeply at peace. What a spell the old magician cast.

Lemminkainen came and squatted beside me, looking gentler than before, for the music had that power even over him.

“How old is he?” I whispered.

He shook his head, “No one remembers when Old Vainamoinen wasn't old.”

“He must have a fine brood of grandsons.”

“It's strange, that. He's never had a child of his loins, though he's lusty enough. In a way, I suppose, we are all his children.”

“And I'm puzzled, Lemminkainen.”

“How is that?”

“The sampo. Why do they want it back so badly? For its magic is filth and dust compared to the magic in Vainamoinen's song. And what if they learn too late that its only power is the power to turn Kalevala into Pohjola?”

He looked up sideways and searched my face for a long moment, “What a peculiar sort of viikinki you are.” Then sighed and shook his head, “The wise are never quite wise enough, are they?”

It was nearly dark when the singing ended. Men and women moved away, to bed down where they could, and I returned the sleeping child to its mother. Vainamoinen stood and stretched himself and straightway grabbed at a lassie who flitted by—she could have been Ainikki's twin. He gave her a woolly kiss, but she escaped from his arms and ran away laughing, “You're too old, Vainamoinen!”

“Too old,” he sighed after her, “too old.” He turned and shambled to the house.

The thought stirred in me that if I were not ‘the viikinki'—or maybe even if I were—here, with a sweet little wife to warm me and this wizard to teach me all his wit, here might be a place to rest a while from wandering.

Inside, while the lamps still burned, I stayed up with the young men, sharpening weapons and boasting how many of Pohjola's folk we would send down the Dark River.

“But their magicians are fearsome,” said one.

“Bah!” said another. “We'll leave them with grass growing through their heads.”

By the All-Father, I hoped so.

The sun was over the treetops when I awoke. A young Kalevalan, armed with crossbow and sword, was prodding me with his toe.

I tried to get up but sank back with a groan, knowing I was going to be sick again. It was all that lovely fat bear meat I had loaded my shrunken stomach with. I'd spent most of the night clutching my belly and shitting, and only near daybreak had gotten to sleep at last; a sleep filled with rushing, crashing dreams.

Making my way shakily to the water bucket, which stood in a corner of the big empty room, I plunged my whole head in, which made me feel a little better. I dressed myself in Finnish clothes lent me by the farmer's oldest son and buckled on a borrowed sword and dagger.

Weak-kneed and hollow-bellied, I emerged into the glare of a bright fall morning just as Vainamoinen's rumbling voice rang out across the yard. He was marshaling his troops and calling each man up by name to present his weapons for inspection. The singer was in fine feather, with his tall cap on his head and a leather jerkin studded with brass nails over his leaf green tunic. His snowy beard rippled down his chest to the buckle of his sword belt. Waving his sword to one side and the other, he sorted the men into batches of a dozen, the complement for each war-sloop.

It came as a surprise to me, seeing him now, to observe that he wasn't actually a very big man. But he had a way of filling all the space around him with his presence, so that you remembered him bigger than he was.
Even that may not be the whole truth of it. Against all sense and reason, it seemed to me that at a certain moment of high feeling—as I will tell below—he actually
got
bigger. Absurd, of course.

“Hai, Lemminkainen,” I heard him call to the Rover, “you grim fellow! Shouldn't a man laugh when he drinks the beer of war?”

But Lemminkainen was not to be cheered. He stood with his men, apart, looking morose. I, too, hailed the brother of the girl I loved—and got only a curt nod in reply.

All the smoldering anger that he harbored against the viikingit had returned with double force, it seemed, as soon as the gentling effects of Vainamoinen's music had worn off.

Not a good beginning.

I had worked it all out in my mind during the night, in between bouts of nausea. With their father dead, I figured it was Lemminkainen's right to give his sister in marriage. Of course, it was too soon to speak of that—I feared to anger him when Ainikki's life depended on our working together. First I must make him my friend. I didn't expect it to be easy.

With a smile on my lips, I strolled over to where he stood.

“Here, Viikinki.” Frowning, he thrust a crossbow into my hands like the one he himself carried. “Don't play with the darts, they're dipped in adder's venom.”

Like your tongue
, I nearly said, but muttered thanks instead.

These pleasantries were interrupted by the women of the farm, who brought out bowls of curds for our breakfast. We ate in haste, sitting all together on the ground. As soon as we finished, we started down the path to the beach. There the singer sang over us a charm to make us proof against the iron of our enemies and then, with wild war cries, we ran to launch the boats.

The Finns have no long-ships such as we have. Their largest craft is a sloop, not much bigger than a large rowboat and holding a dozen men if they hug their knees and hang half over the side. In five of these, with Vainamoinen's own red-painted one in the lead, we set sail for Pohjola.

Out of our whole force only Lemminkainen's twenty crossbowmen looked like tested fighters, and even they didn't possess one helmet or ring-shirt between them. The remaining forty or so were indifferently armed, some only with cudgels and scythes. To fill out our strength, we counted on my twelve half-starved men and on an unknown number of
Kalevalans who were said to be gathering in their own boats to join us farther up the coast. Unless these amounted to half a hundred at least I didn't give much for our chances.