The Best Time Travel Stories of the 20th Century (21 page)

Maybe that same wretchedness was what had turned Thorgunna’s heart. Women are a kittle breed, priest, and you who have forsworn them belike understand them as well as I who have slept with half a hundred in six different lands. I do not think they even understand themselves. Birth and life and death, those are the great mysteries, which none will ever fathom, and a woman is closer to them than a man.

The ill wind stiffened, the sea grew gray and choppy under low, leaden clouds, and our headway was poor. At sunset we could row no more, but must pull in to a small, unpeopled bay, and make camp as well as could be on the strand.

We had brought firewood and timber along. Gerald, though staggering with weariness, made himself useful, his sulfury sticks kindling the blaze more easily than flint and steel. Thorgunna set herself to cook our supper. We were not much warded by the boat from a lean, whining wind; her cloak fluttered like wings and her hair blew wild above the streaming flames. It was the time of light nights, the sky a dim, dusky blue, the sea a wrinkled metal sheet, and the land like something risen out of dream mists. We men huddled in our own cloaks, holding numbed hands to the fire and saying little.

I felt some cheer was needed, and ordered a cask of my best and strongest ale broached. An evil Norn made me do that, but no man escapes his weird. Our bellies seemed the more empty now when our noses drank in the sputter of a spitted joint, and the ale went swiftly to our heads. I remember declaiming the death-song of Ragnar Hairybreeks for no other reason than that I felt like declaiming it.

Thorgunna came to stand over Gerald where he sat. I saw how her fingers brushed his hair, ever so lightly, and Ketill Hjalmarsson did too. “Have they no verses in your land?”

she asked.

“Not like yours,” he said, glancing up. Neither of them looked away again. “We sing rather than chant. I wish I had my
gittar
here—that’s a kind of harp.”

“Ah, an Irish bard,” said Hjalmar Broadnose.

I remember strangely well how Gerald smiled, and what he said in his own tongue, though I know not the meaning:
“Only on me mither’s side, begorra.”
I suppose it was magic.

“Well, sing for us,” laughed Thorgunna.

“Let me think,” he said. “I shall have to put it in Norse words for you.” After a little while, still staring at her through the windy gloaming, he began a song. It had a tune I liked, thus:

From this valley they tell me you’re leaving.

I will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile.

You will carry the sunshine with you

That has brightened my life all the while....

I don’t remember the rest, save that it was not quite seemly.

When he had finished, Hjalmar and Grim went over to see if the meat was done. I spied a glimmer of tears in my daughter’s eyes. “That was a lovely thing,” she said.

Ketill sat straight. The flames splashed his face with wild, running red. A rawness was in his tone: “Yes, we’ve found what this fellow can do. Sit about and make pretty songs for the girls. Keep him for that, Ospak.”

Thorgunna whitened, and Helgi clapped hand to sword. Gerald’s face darkened and his voice grew thick: “That was no way to talk. Take it back.”

Ketill rose. “No,” he said. “I’ll ask no pardon of an idler living off honest yeomen.”

He was raging, but had kept sense enough to shift the insult from my family to Gerald alone. Otherwise he and his father would have had the four of us to deal with. As it was, Gerald stood too, fists knotted at his sides, and said: “Will you step away from here and settle this?”

“Gladly!” Ketill turned and walked a few yards down the beach, taking his shield from the boat. Gerald followed. Thorgunna stood stricken, then snatched his ax and ran after him.

“Are you going weaponless?” she shrieked.

Gerald stopped, looking dazed. “I don’t want anything like that,” he said. “Fists—”

Ketill puffed himself up and drew sword. “No doubt you’re used to fighting like thralls in your land,” he said. “So if you’ll crave my pardon, I’ll let this matter rest.”

Gerald stood with drooped shoulders. He stared at Thorgunna as if he were blind, as if asking her what to do. She handed him the ax.

“So you want me to kill him?” he whispered.

“Yes,” she answered.

Then I knew she loved him, for otherwise why should she have cared if he disgraced himself?

Helgi brought him his helmet. He put it on, took the ax, and went forward.

“Ill is this,” said Hjalmar to me. “Do you stand by the stranger, Ospak?”

“No,” I said. “He’s no kin or oath-brother of mine. This is not my quarrel.”

“That’s good,” said Hjalmar. “I’d not like to fight with you. You were ever a good neighbor.”

We stepped forth together and staked out the ground. Thorgunna told me to lend Gerald my sword, so he could use a shield too, but the man looked oddly at me and said he would rather have the ax. They squared off before each other, he and Ketill, and began fighting.

This was no holmgang, with rules and a fixed order of blows and first blood meaning victory. There was death between those two. Drunk though the lot of us were, we saw that and so had not tried to make peace. Ketill stormed in with the sword whistling in his hand. Gerald sprang back, wielding the ax awkwardly. It bounced off Ketill’s shield.

The youth grinned and cut at Gerald’s legs. Blood welled forth to stain the ripped breeches.

What followed was butchery. Gerald had never used a battle-ax before. So it turned in his grasp and he struck with the flat of the head. He would have been hewn down at once had Ketill’s sword not been blunted on his helmet and had he not been quick on his feet. Even so, he was erelong lurching with a dozen wounds.

“Stop the fight!” Thorgunna cried, and sped toward them. Helgi caught her arms and forced her back, where she struggled and kicked till Grim must help. I saw grief on my son’s face, but a wolfish glee on the carle’s.

Ketill’s blade came down and slashed Gerald’s left hand. He dropped the ax. Ketill snarled and readied to finish him. Gerald drew his gun. It made a flash and a barking noise. Ketill fell. Blood gushed from him. His lower jaw was blown off and the back of his skull was gone.

A stillness came, where only the wind and the sea had voice.

Then Hjalmar trod forth, his mouth working but otherwise a cold steadiness over him.

He knelt and closed his son’s eyes, as a token that the right of vengeance was his.

Rising, he said: “That was an evil deed. For that you shall be outlawed.”

“It wasn’t witchcraft,” said Gerald in a stunned tone. “It was like a... a bow. I had no choice. I didn’t want to fight with more than my fists.”

I got between them and said the Thing must decide this matter, but that I hoped Hjalmar would take weregild for Ketill.

“But I killed him to save my own life!” protested Gerald.

“Nevertheless, weregild must be paid, if Ketill’s kin will take it,” I explained.

“Because of the weapon, I think it will be doubled, but that is for the Thing to judge.”

Hjalmar had many other sons, and it was not as if Gerald belonged to a family at odds with his own, so I felt he would agree. However, he laughed coldly and asked where a man lacking wealth would find the silver.

Thorgunna stepped up with a wintry calm and said we would pay. I opened my mouth, but when I saw her eyes I nodded. “Yes, we will,” I said, “in order to keep the peace.”

“So you make this quarrel your own?” asked Hjalmar.

“No,” I answered. “This man is no blood of mine. But if I choose to make him a gift of money to use as he wishes, what of it?”

Hjalmar smiled. Sorrow stood in his gaze, but he looked on me with old comradeship. 

“One day he may be your son-in-law,” he said. “I know the signs, Ospak. Then indeed he will be of your folk. Even helping him now in his need will range you on his side.”

“And so?” asked Helgi, most softly.

“And so, while I value your friendship, I have sons who will take the death of their brother ill. They’ll want revenge on Gerald Samsson, if only for the sake of their good names, and thus our two houses will be sundered and one manslaying will lead to another. It has happened often enough ere now.” Hjalmar sighed. “I myself wish peace with you, Ospak, but if you take this killer’s side it must be otherwise.”

I thought for a moment, thought of Helgi lying with his head cloven, of my other sons on their steads drawn to battle because of a man they had never seen, I thought of having to wear byrnies each time we went down for driftwood and never knowing when we went to bed if we would wake to find the house ringed in by spearmen.

“Yes,” I said, “You are right, Hjalmar. I withdraw my offer. Let this be a matter between you and him alone.”

We gripped hands on it.

Thorgunna uttered a small cry and flew into Gerald’s arms. He held her close. “What does this mean?” he asked slowly.

“I cannot keep you any longer,” I said, “but maybe some crofter will give you a roof.

Hjalmar is a law-abiding man and will not harm you until the Thing has outlawed you.

That will not be before they meet in fall. You can try to get passage out of Iceland ere then.”

“A useless one like me?” he replied in bitterness.

Thorgunna whirled free and blazed that I was a coward and a perjurer and all else evil. I let her have it out before I laid my hands on her shoulders.

“I do this for the house,” I said. “The house and the blood, which are holy. Men die and women weep, but while the kindred live our names are remembered. Can you ask a score of men to die for your hankerings?”

Long did she stand, and to this day I know not what her answer would have been. But Gerald spoke.

“No,” he said. “I suppose you have right, Ospak... the right of your time, which is not mine.” He took my hand, and Helgi’s. His lips brushed Thorgunna’s cheek. Then he turned and walked out into the darkness.

I heard, later, that he went to earth with Thorvald Hallsson, the crofter of Humpback Fell, and did not tell his host what had happened. He must have hoped to go unnoticed until he could somehow get berth on an eastbound ship. But of course word spread. I remember his brag that in the United States folk had ways to talk from one end of the land to another. So he must have scoffed at us, sitting in our lonely steads, and not known how fast news would get around. Thorvald’s son Hrolf went to Brand Sealskin-Boots to talk about some matter, and mentioned the guest, and soon the whole western island had the tale.

Now, if Gerald had known he must give notice of a manslaying at the first garth he found, he would have been safe at least till the Thing met, for Hjalmar and his sons are sober men who would not needlessly kill a man still under the wing of the law. But as it was, his keeping the matter secret made him a murderer and therefore at once an outlaw.

Hjalmar and his kin rode straight to Humpback Fell and haled him forth. He shot his way past them with the gun and fled into the hills. They followed him, having several hurts and one more death to avenge. I wonder if Gerald thought the strangeness of his weapon would unnerve us. He may not have understood that every man dies when his time comes, neither sooner nor later, so that fear of death is useless.

At the end, when they had him trapped, his weapon gave out on him. Then he took a dead man’s sword and defended himself so valiantly that Ulf Hjalmarsson has limped ever since. That was well done, as even his foes admitted. They are an eldritch breed in the United States, but they do not lack manhood.

When he was slain, his body was brought back. For fear of the ghost, he having maybe been a warlock, it was burned, and everything he had owned was laid in the fire with him. Thus I lost the knife he gave me. The barrow stands out on the moor, north of here, and folk shun it, though the ghost has not walked. Today, with so much else happening, he is slowly being forgotten.

And that is the tale, priest, as I saw it and heard it. Most men think Gerald Samsson was crazy, but I myself now believe he did come from out of time, and that his doom was that no man may ripen a field before harvest season. Yet I look into the future, a thousand years hence, when they fly through the air and ride in horseless wagons and smash whole towns with one blow. I think of this Iceland then, and of the young United States men come to help defend us in a year when the end of the world hovers close.

Maybe some of them, walking about on the heaths, will see that barrow and wonder what ancient warrior lies buried there, and they may well wish they had lived long ago in this time, when men were free.

R.A. LAFFERTY

Eccentric, outrageous, and packed with bizarre characters and incidents, R. A.

Lafferty’s (1914–2002) stylistically unconventional short stories are as much a part of
the oral tall tale tradition as they are fantasy and science fiction. Lafferty began
publishing fiction in the 1960s and was a prominent figure in science fiction’s
iconoclastic New Wave, where his gnomic, challenging variations on standard science-fiction and fantasy themes bridged the gap between speculative and mainstream fiction.

A stylistic maverick, Lafferty fills his stories with puns and wordplay that create
incongruous associations. The style of his narratives is similarly adventurous and
includes mixtures of sermons, riddles, doggerel, epigrams, imagined reference works,
and textbook treatises. He has written on subjects ranging from supernatural conspiracy
to evil adolescents, celestial revolutionaries, Native American lore, utopia, demons, and
carnal love.

In his novels he is fond of creating modern corrollaries for classic myths and legends.

Space Chanty
works the basic story of Homer’s
Odyssey
into a wild space opera. In the
Argos cycle, which includes
Archipelago, The Devil Is Dead,
and
Episodes of the Argo,
Jason and the Argonauts are reincarnated as members of a former World War II battle
unit. In
Past Master,
Sir Thomas More is transported in time and space to the planet
Astrobe, where he falls afoul of political intrigue and suffers his seemingly inescapable
martyr’s death. Lafferty’s preoccupation with religious archetypes and the battle (and
sometimes collusion) between good and evil gives much of his writing a mythic
character.