Odin’s Child (46 page)

The weather was fine our first day out, and Vainamoinen steered a brisk course in amongst the tiny skerries that fringe the shore. But in the afternoon of the second day, the sky turned black and sheets of rain swept the gray water.

We bailed for our lives. Lemminkainen, in whose sloop I sat, made us take the sinew bowstrings off of our crossbows, roll them up in our caps and stuff them in our shirts to keep them dry. But it hardly helped.

And with the rain beating against our faces, we never saw the boats that had been supposed to meet us. Perhaps they were never there.

Late that night, hours later than we had planned, we dropped our sails and rowed silently to the far side of a little wooded isle that lay in the bay of Pohjola.

I counted it the eleventh night since my escape.

The rain had passed on by then, leaving behind a cold drizzle that hung in the air and penetrated our bones. Despite the damp, we got a few wet twigs to burn and soon had a smoky fire going, down behind a hummock where it could not be seen from the shore. There we dried our bowstrings and crowded round to warm ourselves, as many as could. Still, our teeth chattered and our spirits were low.

Since that first evening when his singing had charmed me, I had wanted a chance to know Vainamoinen better, but there was never the opportunity. And now, again, he was in ceaseless motion, everywhere at once among the grumbling men. He trotted from group to group where they sat hunched on the cold stones, praising, encouraging, joking. In truth, this man was everything to them.

And so I decided to pass the time with Ilmarinen the Smith, for I thought that he, too, must know many interesting things. I found him sitting some distance from the others, on the trunk of a fallen tree, with his chin on his fist, and seeming deep in thought.

I sat down beside him.

“My father was proud of his blacksmith's skill,” I began. “He was a sorcerer, too. He's dead now, though he visits me sometimes in dreams … He was a gloomy man.”

The smith grunted.

“This sampo of yours,” I began again, “it wants a lot of blood, doesn't it, and fattens on men's pricks. I suppose there was no other way?”

“It eats what it wants and wants what it's been taught,” he said angrily. “Do a man's children always turn out as he would like?”

“Ah … well, I hadn't thought of it just that way. So, when you bring it back, you'll train it to other food?”

He lifted his head from his hand and looked curiously at me. “How should that possibly concern you?”

I didn't intend to answer that question just yet, and so I shrugged it off and we sat for a time in silence.

“Your father,” he said after a while, “he … ah … taught you things?”

“What—magic? No, not much. It's against the law, actually, in my country. They're liable to put you to death for it.”

“You don't say so.”

“And what he did teach me—rune-spells and such—well, I hardly know what to think of it. It did him little good.”

“Oh,” he said gravely, “it never does the sorcerer, you know. That's the price we pay.”

I thought he sounded very sad.

Lemminkainen called to me just then. Leaving Ilmarinen on his log, I went to where the foresters were gathering round their chief. We readied our gear and one more time rehearsed our plan.

The drizzle had thinned now to let a few pale stars shine through between the scudding clouds. The moon had already set. Time to start.

Into the bottom of his sloop we threw our lassos, crossbows, a sack containing tinderboxes, candle stubs, a pot of bear grease, and four extra swords. Then, with whispered farewells all around, two of the Rover's men rowed us to the far side of the inlet where the trees grew down to the water's edge.

These two complained of leaving their chief and asked to be allowed to face death at his side. But he refused them. This was a mission for the two of us alone. We watched the black night swallow them up and waited till the creak of their oars had faded.

“Now, Viikinki,” he said in his biting tone, “let's find some plunder for you.”

Keeping just out of sight of the rampart, we crept through the dripping trees around the curve of the inlet to the spot where I had made
my escape, and, catching the tops of the palings with our lassos, pulled ourselves up and over. Together we huddled at the foot of the wall.

“You hear?” he whispered. “Where's it coming from?”

Distant voices drifted to us.

“Louhi's hall, I think. But it's seldom they carouse so late.”

“Celebrating maybe?”

Celebrating what? I wondered. The end of harvest and the slaughter of my men? He must have been asking himself the same thing. Neither of us dared say it aloud.

Then a dog barked, loud as thunder in the still night, and out of the dark a snarling black form shot at us. Before I could react, Lemminkainen swung his bow around and fired at the glowing eyes, which was all of the beast we could see. The poison worked swiftly.

“Night patrols?” he hissed. “Curse you, Viikinki, why didn't you say so?”

“I didn't know!”

We crouched against the wall, listening with all our ears. Far away, a second dog barked in answer to the first. After that, nothing.

“All right, we go on,” he said at last. “Stick close.”

But first we needed to get our bearings.

“Remember the model I made, Lemminkainen. The hill is ahead of us to the left, a good bowshot away. The sea-gate is off to the right about the same distance. Between them is Louhi's hall. Beyond that you come to the brew-house, the sauna, some other buildings. Then up by the meadow-gate on the far side are the peasants' cottages, barns and stables.”

“And the prison of your men?”

“About fifteen paces this side of Louhi's hall. From its door you can see their door—and, if they look, they can see us.”

“So. The sea-gate first.”

Over the gate a short parapet projected from the inside of the rampart, supported on posts and reached by two ladders, one at either end. Day and night, a pair of sentries stood here looking out to sea. Hrapp had said that Joukahainen was fanatical about this precaution.

Pressing close to the wall and moving by inches, we crept to the foot of the nearer ladder. Lemminkainen tiptoed beneath the parapet and crouched at the other end.

“Now!”

We took the rungs two at a time, leaping onto the parapet with our bows leveled—and nearly shot each other. There were no guards.

The drawbridge, which should have been hauled up at sunset, still lay in place across the ditch below.

We exchanged worried looks. Could it be only carelessness? Or were we being drawn into a trap?

“Load the fire dart, Lemminkainen.”

I bent over the tinderbox and struck a spark to light the oiled rag that he had tied around one of his arrows. With a snap of the string, it streaked low over the black water, toward the island where Vainamoinen had a man watching in a tree-top.

Back on the ground again, we lifted the great oaken cross-beam out of its iron brackets and set it down softly by the wall.

Half our mission was done. Soon the Kalevalan war-sloops would be rounding the island, rowing with muffled oars up the inlet. They would cluster silently, poised to burst through the gate. We had Vainamoinen's promise to wait for the last possible moment before dawn—until, with my arm stretched out before me, I could count my fingers, he had said—to give us time to find Ainikki and get her safely away.

My plan was simply to fire the out-buildings by the meadow-gate—that being the farthest point to which we could lure them—and wait for Joukahainen and his ninety warriors to run in that direction. Then, I with Lemminkainen and my vikings, would rush into the hall, gather up Ainikki and run with her to the sea-gate. There I would have men posted, to hold it open until the Kalevalans landed on the beach. They would attack when they saw the glow of fire from the burning out-buildings.

How simple it had sounded two days ago in the war-council at Kalevala. But now, how foolhardy and desperate! Were my men even alive? Back we slipped along the rampart to where the little prison house screened us from the view from Louhi's door, then, bending low, dashed to its side.

I pressed my ear to the planks. No sound. There was ice in the pit of my stomach.

“Hand me the bear grease,” I whispered.

Holding my breath, I stepped round the corner. If anyone should walk out of Louhi's hall now he would see me. Lemminkainen, with the lassos and crossbows, pressed close behind.

I dipped two fingers in the grease and worked it into the tracks, top and bottom, over which the door screeched when it was slid open. Then I groped for the lock—a contraption of leather loops with a pin that went through them—and fumbled with it.

“Can't you hurry?

“I've never worked the thing before—I can't see to do it.”

“Let me.”

“Get away!”

Throwing down all our gear, he thrust his hands in among mine and we struggled with the lock and each other. From the hall came a snatch of song and the sound of a bench scraping. Every nerve in my body screamed, “Run!”

At last the pin came away in my hand.

“Now, pull, Lemminkainen, while I push … gently….”

“It doesn't move.

“A little harder….”

There came a screech like the yowl of a scalded cat. My heart somersaulted into my mouth.

“Wide enough … get in.” He shoved at my back.

We stepped into complete and total blackness.

They're dead
!

Next moment, a fist crashed into the side of my head and another into my stomach. Hands gripped my arms and legs and flung me on my back. Stinking, naked bodies held me down and a foul breath blew in my face. Nearby, the Rover also thrashed in the straw, cursing.

A hard hand covered my mouth and the sharpened end of a broken stick pressed against my throat.

“This for you, whoreson!”

“Ahh—ahh! Stig, it's me!”

In the glow of our candles their faces hovered like phantoms, dark-circled eyes screwed up against the light. Skeletal ribs and breastbones showed through the holes in their rags. Their skins were black with grime, and coils of matted hair and beard hung from their heads like hunks of rope. Were we this bad? I had to leave and come back to see us as we really looked.

“Odd, it's you?”

They put out their hands to touch me. Stig, with his crumpled nose jutting out of a fleshless face, and Glum, with the skin sagging on his
huge bones. Einar Tree-foot's neck was nothing but tendons, I could close my hand around it. And young Bengt's face, black as a lump of coal and streaked with tears … and Starkad, and Brodd, and all of them….

I swallowed until my voice would work.

“Well, I will pick my next crew for looks,” I said, and they laughed a little. “This is Lemminkainen.” He was picking straws from his clothes and watching us with a gimlet eye. “And outside the sea-gate is a band of warriors waiting. Are you fit for sword play?”

Thor's blazing beard, yes, they were fit!

“How have you been, old friends?”

“Joukahainen said you were dead,” answered Stig in a low voice. “‘'Twasn't but two days after we last saw you that he learned you'd slipped him. Hrapp said the old witch just kept at him to let you out of the pit. Imagine his surprise when he found it empty.

“He came straight to us in a blazing fury, with Hrapp along to translate, and said he knew where you'd gone to, that that little girl was behind it, and he'd have you back in short order and skin the both of you together. After that, they spent the next five days sending out parties to look for you. I didn't know they cared so much about you.”

“Not me,” I replied, “my friend here. Forewarned, he would be hard to trap—as we're about to prove.”

“Well anyway, Joukahainen comes back at last, sneering and crowing, to tell us that you're dead—just like that—your bones found picked clean by wolves. I guess he had to say that, didn't he, and hope it was true. Of course, we didn't believe him without a piece of you to prove it, but we didn't know what to think. How did they miss finding you?”

“I suppose because they knew where I was going.”

“How's that?”

“They knew the way to Kalevala better than I did. While they were watching it, I was wandering around lost, miles from where I should have been.”

Stig's ugly face cracked into a smile, and I considered to myself that Tapio, god of hunters, had done right by me after all.

Starkad took up their story. “After the Headsman called off his search, it was back to the fields for us. Hrapp had gotten to us by then and told what was in store for us. We didn't let on that we knew—just said our prayers and worked mighty slow.”

“Where is the hullu?”

He shrugged, “Never saw him again.”

“We saw that little girl though,” Einar struck in, “two, three days ago. Joukahainen was marching her to the sauna as we were coming back from the fields. Him strutting along, cock o' the walk, with his arm on her neck and she with her bundle of birch twigs to stroke him with. She didn't look at us, nor we at her—just a little flick of an eyelid as we passed. She looked as white as if she hadn't a drop of blood in her body.”

“But alive!”

I translated for Lemminkainen.

He gave the merest nod and never changed his expression.

“And that was the same day we finished the harvest,” said Stig. “And the funny thing is that no one's come near us since. Three days, by the crowing of the cock. No Joukahainen, no anyone, except for an old woman and her boy once to bring us a bucket of water and some slops. That was yesterday.”

“And us near to perishing,” Einar added, “and so, says I, ‘better to go like wolves than lambs.' Broke off a sliver of my crutch for a weapon, and we made a pact to jump the first Finn bastard who stuck his head in the door—kill him, and make a run for it. Hah! Turned out to be you!”