Odin’s Child (50 page)

Taking stock of our supplies, we found that the Finns had helped themselves to whatever was worth stealing. Both anchor and chain, made of precious iron, were gone; likewise a set of hammers and chisels that had belonged to Kraki. All of our sea chests had been ransacked of anything in the way of coins, buckles, or brooches.

Looking under the loose deck planks, where our bulkier gear was stowed, we found the ship's awning untouched, though they had lifted all our sleeping sacks of oiled sealskin. Of ship's stores, the water barrel was dry, the ale cask gone, and the oats and biscuit maggoty.

But no matter, we were alive. Free.

We peeled off our rags and splashed in the sea, washing away forever the smell of Pohjola. We picked lice from each other's heads, trimmed our hair and beards with our knives, and cleaned our teeth and our fingernails. And that night we feasted on fresh-killed roebuck until we rolled on our backs and groaned.

We lacked only ale and women. But those at least we had the means to buy as soon as we were among men again. For we had Pohjola's treasure—stowed carefully away under the Viper's deck.

And so passed some dozen golden autumn days in hunting and playing, bathing, sleeping, and eating until our bellies filled our skins again, and all our spirits rejoiced.

All except Glum's.

The berserker looked more woebegone than ever and had no more to say than if his mouth were full of water. He worried me.

I had gone off one morning to shoot at game with my Finnish crossbow and had bagged some hares. Bringing them back to camp, I tossed them down where Glum sat moodily under a tree and began to skin them.

“We'll soon be dining in Jumne Town, old friend, and telling our tales to bright-eyed lassies, eh?”

He mumbled some reply.

“What is it then, Glum? Can't you shake off this black mood, now that we're free of Louhi's spells?”

Frowning at the big hands that lay useless in his lap, he said in a mournful voice, “Friend Odin has lost me, Odd, or I him—I don't know which. Ever since I was a lad of thirteen I've felt him here under my hide”—he indicated the general region of his belly—“and knew that I was his. But now?”

“By the Raven, can't you see what ails the man?” Einar Tree-Foot had hobbled up while Glum was speaking and eased himself down beside us.

Einar had been a very mother to Glum during our captivity; cheering him by day, sleeping near him at night, even, when he could manage it,
stealing an extra egg or two for him, because a warrior of Odin needs more food than ordinary men. And even now that we were free, he seldom let the berserker out of his sight.

“They stole his spirit in Pohjola with their filthy tricks,” Einar fumed, “and he hasn't got it back, and so of course, Odin don't know where to find him. Any fool can see that.”

“As it happens,” I replied, “this is a subject I know something about.” And I told them about how I had lost my own soul and how the ancient noaidi had fetched it back for me. “Ask Stig, he was there. He can tell you what a different man I was before and after.”

Stig, who sat nearby mending his breeches with needle and thread, looked up and smiled, agreeing that I had indeed been mad before and only half-mad since.

“Odd Tangle-Hair,” said Glum, brightening, “could he find my soul, this wizard? Do you think he could?” He appealed to me with his eyes.

“Glum, it's ever so far to the north, I honestly don't know where. Perhaps next summer we could try….”

The spark of hope died, his eyes went dull again. Not knowing what else to say I turned back to cleaning the hares, when suddenly Einar snapped his fingers.

“Glum, my lad, you don't ken the rune-signs, do you?”

No, Glum sighed, such things were not for his head.

“Ah, but Odd, you have the craft, have you not?”

“I have, Tree-Foot. Why?”

“Well mates, now Einar Tree-Foot is going to tell you something that he don't tell to many—and he don't want it repeated neither, for when folks find out that a man has the craft, why they won't leave him alone with their nonsense.”

“Einar, what are you talking about?”

“I mean to say,” he dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “that I have the wit to talk with Odin All-Father through the runes.”

“You never—”

“The runes come from Odin, don't they? Why, even as simple a fellow as Glum knows that much.”

The berserker gave a wan smile and allowed as how the whole world probably knew that much.

“Well then, and there you have it. We don't need to be running after
some foreign magician—not that he wasn't a lucky find for you, Captain, in your time of need. But it's not for Glum. All we have to do is carve Glum's name on a rune stave and burn ‘er, don't you see? Send ‘er to Odin in the smoke. And by Ymir's Eyebrows, the All-Father will know what to do then. Glum, my boy, your troubles are just about over.”

I shook my head, disbelieving. “Einar, this isn't—”

“And, Odd,” he went on quickly, “this is where you come in. The cruelest blow that that scoundrel dealt me, who parted me from my right hand so long ago, was to put an end to my rune carving. I've never got the hang of it with this other. And so, Odd, my friend, if you'd be so kind”—reaching across Glum he took me by the shoulder and looked steadily into my eyes—“as to do that for us?”

“Einar, for one thing, it must be carved on a rowan slip,” I protested, “and there's none about.”

“Rubbish! Must I be lectured by a stripling? The wise-woman who taught me had the craft from Odin's own lips, and she never said aught about rowan. Carve from this here.” He handed me a scrap of driftwood.

I did as he asked, wondering what foolishness he was up to. With the point of my knife I scratched the four signs of Glum's name:
kaun
, the torch …
logr
, the water …
ur
, the wild ox …
madr
, the man.

Bengt sidled up and eyed us suspiciously. “More deviltry?” he sniffed. “We might as well have stayed in Pohjola!”

“Hold your tongue!” snapped Einar. “When I want a sniveling Christman's opinion I will ask for it. Now then, Odd, give it here.”

He brought the slip close to his good eye and tipped it back and forth. “You were taught fair, I'll say that. Mind you, not as well as I was m'self.” (He was holding it upside down.) “Now, a helmet, if you please, and the use of your tinderbox.”

As a wisp of white smoke rose from the upturned helmet, Einar uttered a string of unintelligible words in singsong fashion. Bengt crossed himself and beat a retreat while the others stood around and watched us from a safe distance. Glum stared at the piece of wood smoldering in the bottom of the helmet as though his eyes would pop out of his head.

When it was done, Einar beamed with satisfaction, stirred the ash once with his finger, spat into the helmet, and clapped it, ashes and all, on Glum's wondering head.

“Done! He's found you and he'll have your spirit back under your hide in double-quick time. You'll howl with the wolves again!”

Glum's little O of a mouth curved into a smile and his eyes lit up. “Then I'd best sharpen my old axe,” he chuckled.

†

That evening I drew Einar aside.

“I know, I know. You're a smart ‘un, Odd Tangle-Hair, I never thought to fool you.”

“But have you thought that fooling with Odin might be a little dangerous? The All-Father isn't particularly known for his sense of humor.”

“Bah! Odin and I are old friends. He'll not complain. By the Raven, man, should he let one of his own berserkers just pine away to nothing?”

“I suppose it could have worked.”

“If it did or if it didn't, Glum's feeling his old self again and it warms my heart to see it. And just bear in mind that Friend Odin is, among other things, the god of liars.” He gave his beard a decisive tug and winked.

†

Next morning early, Stig sniffed the air. There was a bite in it and the damp feel of snow.

“I'd feel happier if we were snug in Jumne harbor right now,” he said.

And so it was decided. We filled the barrel with fresh water, brought on board the deer meat we had dried, and were soon at sea.

All day we sailed along the Finnish coast, and just at dusk, approached that gulf of the Varangian Sea that separates Finland from the country of the Ests. There we took a bearing on the setting sun and made our course south-southwest for Jumne.

We were in good spirits and just thinking about putting food in our bellies when the sky fell.

The day, which began cool, had by midday turned hot and close. The wind died to a whisper, yet something unseen was in the air that made us feel ill at ease. Then very quickly that sensation, whatever it was, increased a hundred-fold and we saw that the hairs on our forearms stood up and
crackled when we touched them.

The sky turned green, and all along the horizon, a wall of black cloud gathered and rolled toward us. From it, quivering tongues of lightning leapt down, marching across the water.

“Put her nose about,” said Einar tensely.

“Run for the coast.”

A bolt struck so near us that we leapt straight up at the
crack
.

“Secure oars,” I cried, “take in sail. We'll ride her out!”

While we rushed about the deck, the black wall rolled in, and a wind lashed us with volleys of hailstones as big as pigeons' eggs. The sea rose and the deck dropped under me. The Viper pitched and plunged like a hooked salmon. It was only Ake the shipwright's skill in making her so loose-jointed that saved her from breaking up. Still, she labored fearfully hard in that confusion of pounding waves.

As for ourselves, we clung grimly to our handholds and begged Thor or Christ to save us.

It was then that I caught sight of Glum. Through a film of streaming seawater, I glimpsed him standing amidships with one arm round the mast and the other brandishing his long-handled axe. Flashes of lightning lit his face—Great Odin, his wolf's face! The mouth open, lips drawn back over the teeth, nostrils flared, eyes white and round. He shook his wolf-gray head in a fury from side to side and screamed, joining his howl to the howling of the wind in one indistinguishable roar.

The All-Father had found him! In the midst of this crashing chaos he was the god's berserker again, crazy for battle.

Still the lightning licked around us, and at the top of the mast, where the shreds of our sail stood straight out in the wind, hung a crackling blue halo of light.

“Glum, get away!” I cried, but the wind took my words. I started to crawl towards him over the tilting deck. Too late! A light more dazzling than day burst around me. There came a
crack
like the splitting of a mountain asunder, and a searing heat. I cowered with my hands over my face while black flowers bloomed behind my lids. The noise of the storm sounded as faint to my ringing ears as an echo in a shell.

When I looked again, the stump of our mast was riven to the deck.

And of Glum there was left—not a scrap.

But the storm left us no time for wonderment. Rain pounded the deck and towering seas broke over us. The Viper shipped water and began to founder. Still dazed and clumsy from the shock of the blast, we struggled to lift out the deck planks to open up a place to bail.

Flashes of lightning lit his face—Great Odin, his wolf's face
!

Looking down at the water roiling in the hold, we despaired. Our treasure! The chest, had burst and all the precious silver tumbled everywhere in glinting streaks and eddies as the Viper rolled and pitched.

We could try to save our riches, or we could bail and save our lives. To do both was impossible.

We bailed—hour after hour, flinging helmets of water back into the face of the storm. And every foaming wave that swept over us went away with more of our silver in its pockets. Until, by the time the wind died late that night and the stars came out, it was gone, all but a handful of coins trapped in the folds of the awning and a length of silver chain that had gotten wedged between two strakes.

Like the poor Kalevalans with their sampo, we stood in dripping clothes and gazed bitterly at the black water.

Don't mock us for our greed. Possessing that treasure, whether its worth was great or small, signified that our long pains and sorrows in the country of the Finns had gone for
something
. With that treasure we might have taken our ease in some cozy tavern, thumb in belt and feet to the fire, tipping a wink to the yokels sitting round, jingling our purse, and saying, “Finland, my friends, if its loot you're after. Queer sort of place, though, thick with witches….” We would've spun the wretched straw of slavery into golden coins of stories.

But without the treasure, we were dogs. Runaway slaves without fortune or fame.

†

As day broke, clear and serene, we took stock. Half the deck planking was lost, a part of the aft bulwark was stove in, and most of the sea chests had gone overboard—not that they had much in them, but they served us for rowing benches. The oars, at least, had been tightly lashed down; of those we had many more than we needed: with Glum now gone, we were only twelve.