Winter Serpent (42 page)

“Take a message to Flann the Culdee at Glen Laghan,” she commanded. “No, tell Barra, for I know he will do this last for me.”

She grasped the side of the coracle, holding it briefly to the shore despite, their tugging. She bent her head and managed to slip off the cross which Flann had given her. She threw it into the boat and it gleamed at the feet of the paddler.

“Tell Flann the Culdee I do not need his faith to protect me, for I will soon be strong in my own.”

She tried to think of other, better words for Flann but the Picts broke away and turned their boats against the swift current.

She watched them, shading her eyes with her hand against another burst of sunlight which illuminated the island. The boats were gliding into deep shadow.

It was futile to call to them; they were like ghosts now, and they would not heed her voice.

She sighed, the sunlight warm upon her head. No, she could not find the words to call to them and they would not listen. So it went with all upon this earth, forever crying to each other through the light and the dark, unheeding, wordless, uncomforted.

22

There was the usual difficulty in getting the cattle into the ships. The darkness and the wild bursts of wind, the tossing of the longships in the rough sea, maddened the animals. They had to be thrown and tied and hauled over the sides in loading. Many were injured in the
effort; Hallfreor bellowed for them to be thrown back overboard.

“Where is Sweyn Barrelchest?” Snorri Olavson called. Hallfreor went to the prow of the longship and looked down at the man on the beach.

“There,” the steersman pointed, indicating a knot of men. Snorri folded his billowing cloak about him, cursing the wind.

“Who is it?” Sweyn called. Snorri followed the sound of his voice. The older man was sitting with his back resting against a pile of clothing. Arne Hammershield and his steersman, Braggi, bending over him.

“Who is it?” Sweyn asked again.

“Snorri Olavson. I was seeking you at shipside. What sort of wound have you caught?”

“Where is Thorsten Ljot? Where is the berserkr?” Sweyn insisted.

“Where is anything? In the dark, in the cursed wind,” Snorri growled. He knelt and pulled away the shield which Sweyn held tightly pressed to his
middle. A gush of dark liquid leaped out and ran down the man’s groin onto his legs. Snorri quickly pushed the shield back into place.

“They have gutted you, man,” he said quietly.

“A little dark man with a knife, under my guard,” Sweyn said. “I think he stood on tiptoe to do it, the runted little whoreson.”

“You know we cannot wait for you,” Snorri said. “My ships are taking water now, and it may be we will have to lighten them by throwing the livestock overboard if the wind keeps up.”

Sweyn nodded.

Snorri’s crew chief appeared at his shoulder.

“I am coming;” Snorri said to him. He unbuckled his sword belt, let it fall from his shoulder. He laid the sword at Sweyn’s feet. “Your death gift, Sweyn Barrelchest.”

Snorri’s crew chief pulled out a brooch, laid it on the sword. “For your funeral pyre, Chieftain,” he said.

They were gone. Sweyn stirred.

“What is the look of the sky?” he asked. “Still dark,” Braggi told him, “and overcast.”

A sudden shower muffled the sound of Snorri’s ships being cast off from the beach. When it died they heard the faint voices of the crew chiefs calling for the masts to be set up, the sails unfurled.

“Now, what is that?” Sweyn cried irritably, as some caterwauling broke out on the beach.

“Some argument over women, doubtless,” Arne Hammershield answered. “I will attend to it.”

When he had left them Sweyn shifted his back restlessly against the pile of clothing. Another dark stain spread out on his tunic, wetting the sand by his side.

“My belly bleeds like a spring freshet,” he complained. “It waits for nothing, not even Thorsten Ljot.”

He was interrupted by shouting, scuffling in the darkness.

“Now, do not tell me they bring their wenching fights into my lap!” Sweyn barked.

He shook his fist into the air.

“Chieftain,” Braggi said, “it is Gunnar Olavson and another man. They bring the berserkr.”

Sweyn pulled forward, clutching the shield tightly.

“Laggard!” he called. “You will keep us here until the Scots come over the mountains to kill us.” He peered anxiously into the darkness. “Is that you now, Thorsten Eiricsson of Sogne?”

The dark shapes seemed to lurch toward them with difficulty. Something fell, and they stopped.

“This time was the worst,” Gunnar Olavson said as he approached. He wiped his perspiring face with his hands. “When the berserkr had calmed enough to be tied, it was still like hauling a whale at the end of a line. A foot at a time we went, stumbling and wallowing. I despaired of ever reaching you.” “Lift me, lift me!” Sweyn ordered impatiently. They put their arms under him and carried him the few feet to the figure sprawled on the sand. A line of
blood trailed after them.

“Now,” Sweyn said, as they put him down at the Jarl’s side. “Take a knife and cut the bearskin away. No, no, do not take it away. Leave it by him.”

The Northmen looked down at the still giant, his legs sprawled, his arm drawn up to pillow his cheek.

“He sleeps,” Braggi observed.

“Yes, he sleeps,” Sweyn rumbled. “How he sleeps! My blood is running out and he lies like a child in his mother’s arms, sweetly sleeping. I have waited death to speak my last words to him.”

He stopped, grimaced, and looked forlorn.

“What I would have said to him is lost. He will wake and find me dead, and he will still be a prisoner of his bonds.”

“Speak to me and I will tell him,” Braggi said. Sweyn looked at his steersman.

“Yes, tell him,” he said morosely. “Tell him that he thinks he must revenge himself upon her and his son, that he must destroy what he wants in order to satisfy the bjorn. He may be right, for I have seen this is the usual fate of the berserkr. You may tell him I, too, remember Ouela, who was an Inglinga from Uppsala and a kinsman of Thorsten Ljot’s mother’s, and I remember the winter he spent in Sogne. This Ouela was the famed berserkr, the great warrior, even though slight of stature and with brown curling hair like a woman’s. A fair man, a handsome man, yet a beast when he was in his rage like all the bjorn brothers. All the children, and Thorsten Eiricsson was among them then, were forbidden to come to him or bother him because he was the great berserkr, sitting wrapped in his bearskin before the fire, waiting for his battle, for the voices which would speak to him. Alone he was, and shunned by men in their great awe and fear. At the end he went mad and roamed the forest with the spirit of the bear always on him. He starved to death or froze, there is no way of knowing. But he was with the bjorn, and until death took him he heard only their voices. Will you tell this fine tale now to Thorsten Ljot, to remind him of his fate? Which one of you will bear this message?”

They looked away from him and shuffled their feet uneasily.

“No, only Sweyn Barrelchest could speak to him thus,” Braggi said. “Your words will mean nothing for they will be your words, and he does not hear them.”

Sweyn paused and knitted his brows.

“But I would have my last joke! I do not fear the bjorn. When they come to me in hell and taunt me, I will spit in their faces! Odin is my god… he gave a good left eye for wisdom. That is something to be proud of!”

He paused again and he was panting for breath. But he began to grin ferociously. “No, wait! I have a good thought” He started to laugh. He pulled the

shield to him and bent over it and laughed heartily.

“Tell him,” he wheezed, “tell Thorsten Ljot, the sworn brother of the bears, that his first-born, his son who lives, shall bear my name, not his. I take the child from the bjorn and it may be I also take his father! Yes, say that this is my death wish. I swear it now. My death wish, which cannot be broken. My ghost is upon his son and I say the child shall sacrifice to Odin, not the brotherhood of the bears. The ravens of Odin shall be the child’s sign instead of the bearskin. Hear his name: Sweyn Thorstensson! It has a good sound! And this is what he shall be called. In this way I pierce the berserkr’s dream, I break the vows, I shatter the beast. He will see it.”

He bellowed his laughter. Braggi bent over him, touching him. Sweyn shook him off.

“My blood seals it!” he roared. He threw the shield from him. “Burn me well, here on the beach, so that the Scots may see what a big fire I make!”

His steersman went to his knees with a cry, pressing back the spurting wound with his hands. But the red fountain died.

Sweyn was dead.

At the dawn a steady fresh wind sprang up to drive away the clouds. The crews of the bear ship and Sweyn’s longships had gathered driftwood in a high pile on the beach. They wrapped Sweyn Barrelchest in his long cloak, set his horned helmet upon his head, and carried him to the top of the pyre, laying him out straight, placing his funeral gifts around him. The sunlight broke through then, touching the sea and making the roughened waves glitter, the gold scattered in the driftwood pile, lighting the brow of the old chief’s helm.

Gunnar held a bucket of sea water for Thorsten Ljot while he washed. “How is it with the Jarl?” Braggi asked.

“He feels good. His head is clear,” Gunnar said. He nodded. “He knows what has occurred.”

“Yes, I know,” the Jarl said. He was getting to his feet slowly.

Gunnar emptied the bucket onto the sand. The big man bent and picked up the bloodstained bearskin. He shook it out carefully, folded it.

“Sweyn Barrelchest gave me words for you,” Braggi began, but the Jarl shook his head.

“Gunnar has told me what I need to know. As for the rest, I see what

Sweyn Barrelchest has done, and I am thinking on it. This thing he calls his
‘last joke’ and which he has left for me. The bjorn oaths are not easily broken. But then who can defy a man’s death wish?”

“He was a stubborn man,” Braggi said, “and will make a stubborn ghost.” The Jarl looked at Sweyn’s steersman, at his cousin Gunnar Olavson.

“You know this might bring our deaths,” he said softly. “We do not linger in an empty land.”

“I speak for the ships of Sweyn Barrelchest,” Braggi answered him. “His trust is now our trust.”

Gunnar nodded.

“Then let us go down to the dead,” the Jarl said.

They went down to the edge of the sea, to the pile of driftwood where the Vikings stood silent. The Jarl took the lighted pine-knot and cast it high on the pyre. The wood began to sputter, to burn. Flames crept under the cloak-wrapped figure, burst out around the gleaming helmet and the shining gold of the death gifts.

Braggi the steersman stepped back, the men watching him. He threw his arms wide, his chin to the sky. His bared throat moved, fluttered, and then a low moan curled from him, rose like the black smoke going skyward from the pyre.

He cried out again and again, the eerie sound wind-whipped back into the cliffs of the loch. The Jarl stood with bent head, sternly silent, the bearskin in his arms.

The Viking crews threw back their heads and the low, mournful death song was begun. The pile of wood was now a mesh of flames, the figure on top hidden.

The massive Jarl stepped forward to the fire and threw open the once-white bearskin. He shook it once, the flames guttering before it, and then tossed it high onto the burning pile.

“Sweyn, son of Harald, son of Leif, take my death gift!” he shouted.

He stood close to the heat and smoke, watching the hide smoldering, burning reluctantly.

The thing finally charred; then little tongues of fire burst through it and it fell in shreds, disappeared. The figure of the Jarl seemed to sigh.

“So be it, then,” he said slowly.

He took his knife from his belt and held out his left arm. The knife moved, left a dripping red scratch on the forearm. Then, woodenly holding the arm up for all to see, he plunged his hand into the flames and held it there.

The death songs died.

In the silence the Jarl pulled his hand back, quickly covered it with the other.

“Yes,” he cried, his face turned toward the black smoke funneling skyward. “Yes, the iron cuts, the fire burns, and the vows are broken. This is the way it will be. Sweyn Thorstensson is my son’s name!”

23

The small island midway between Coire Cheathaich and the sea stood in the gorge of Cumhainn like a motionless ship, the muddy banks of the upstream edge throwing up a ripple of water like the prow which cleaves the current, the green sails of the willow trees
moving slightly in the hot wind. The island was still lush and green despite the drought, although the current moving past was full of the fallen leaves from above torn loose by the storm. The eternal shafts of light falling in the narrows lit the place in a dazzling stillness; the breath of the dry, exhausted summer seemed to linger here sadly, as if in a severed, secret piece of time.