Brandewyne, Rebecca (11 page)

"There
is a fat old duck who has foolishly strayed from the rest at the mere and
fallen into a little crevice, easy pluckings now for a hungry wolf. Go you down
to the foot of that small hill yonder and see if I do not speak the
truth."

And
indeed, she did; for that was how he found Olaf the Sea Bull— lying facedown in
a rill that gurgled through a shallow clove at the foot of the small hill— so
that afterward, he was never certain whether Olaf had toppled in a drunken
stupor from the knoll, or whether Yelkei had given him a shove. Wulfgar always
suspected the latter. Hastily, he dragged Olaf's heavy bulk from the stream,
relieved that as he pressed down hard upon Olaf's back, the grey-beard began to
cough and to sputter, a trickle of water running from his mouth. After a
moment, the Sea Bull lurched to his hands and knees, retching, and Wulfgar
smelled the stench of sour wine and ale and the remnants of the midday's
horsemeat stew. Then, at last, his stomach purged of its contents, Olaf managed
to sit up and, bleary-eyed, peered at Wulfgar beside him.

"That'd
not be something stronger than water in that flask of yours, would it?" he
asked Wulfgar, indicating the leather flask
slung over the younger man's shoulder.
"Ale, perhaps, to wash this foul taste from my mouth."

"Nabid,"
Wulfgar
returned shortly, unstoppering the flask and handing it to him, "but you
are more than welcome to it, lord."

Taking
a generous swig, Olaf swished the beer around vigorously in his mouth for a
moment, then spat it out on the ground before gulping another long draught,
which he swallowed. After recapping the flask and passing it back to Wulfgar,
Olaf rose and staggered to the rill. There, hunkering down and cupping his
hands, he splashed his pasty face several times with cold water, shaking his
head to sling his wet hair from his eyes and, with one hand, wiping his
scraggly, dripping mustache and beard.

"How
I came to roll down that hill, I do not remember," he said finally,
grimacing as he gingerly probed his brow, which he had struck on a rock in the
stream. "There must have been more of a bite to old Brunhilde's ale than I
thought, or else, more like, she tried to poison me— which I'd not put past
her, the vile-tempered shrew. Ah, well. 'Tis no matter. I reckon 'tis thanks to
you, lad, that I'll not be going to my burial mound this day."

"Aye,
well, 'twas no more and no less than
any other man would have done had he
spied you lying there, lord." Wulfgar carefully kept his eyes lowered, his
tone respectful, knowing how another in his place would have roared with
laughter at Olaf's tumble and made him the butt of many a jest far and wide.
"You'd have pulled your own self out of the water had I not happened
along— for surely, 'tis Odinn's fondest desire that a
jarl
such as Olaf
the Sea Bull die in battle, to be borne by the Valkyries to Valhöll."

"You
know me, then, do you?" Olaf inquired, obviously flattered and pleased.

"Why,
who does not, lord? 'Tis said from shore to shore of the Northland that a man
may count himself lucky to serve as
thegn
to Olaf the Sea Bull— and so I
would count myself, lord, if you would have my pledge."

"What,
lad? You've not yet sworn oath? Why, what ails you?"

"Naught,
lord, save that I came late to the festivities," Wulfgar lied boldly,
realizing suddenly that Olaf was not only still slightly drunk and dazed, but
also short of sight and so had not recognized him. With his mustache and beard
shaved off, Wulfgar thought that Olaf, in his stupor, had probably mistaken him
for one of the younger, untried men who had come to the midspring
blót
in search of a
jarl.
"And no
matter a man's worth, there
is only so much space on a longship— and much of
that has already been claimed by those who arrived sooner than I."

"Well,
by the gods, my
Dragon's
Fire
has
room for one more, if you're of a mind to bend knee before me!" Drawing
the broadsword at his back, Olaf plunged it, point down, into the soft earth
along the stream, so the blade stood upright, quivering a little before him.
"So, kneel you, then, lad, and set your right hand to her hilt and swear
your fealty."

This,
Wulfgar did, and when he rose, he was at long last a
Víkingr.

The Taking of
the Bride

What
Olaf the Sea Bull thought when he sobered up and discovered the trick Wulfgar
had played him, Wulfgar never knew. Olaf said naught of the matter to him— or
indeed to anyone Wulfgar knew— doubtless because the older man would have been
made to look worse than a fool in light of Ragnar's open enmity toward Wulfgar.
Although Olaf was drunk more often than not, he had both vanity and pride; and
so in the end, he put on a brave face and declared that he would not be told
how to stoke his own hearth fire, not even by his king, and that it would be a
sorry day in the Northland when the
jarlar
could not count
themselves masters of their own marklands. So unexpectedly shrewd and
potentially incendiary were these words that
afterward, doubtless fearing the hue
and cry that would be set up against him by every freeman entitled to speak at
the
Thing,
Ragnar prudently offered no challenge to Olaf, but chose
instead to bide his time, pretending as though the entire business of Wulfgar's
oath-swearing were beneath notice.

Wulfgar
strove mightily to ensure that Olaf should have no other cause, save that of
Ragnar's animosity, to regret accepting his fealty. Wulfgar rose earlier and
worked harder than half a dozen of Olaf's other men, which was not difficult,
considering how shiftless and lazy they had grown, serving a lord who seldom
made his authority felt.

Olaf's
longship, the
Dragon
Fire,
was
beached on the shores of the Skagerrak, where she had ridden out the winter;
and now, the first thing his
thegns
did after the
midspring
blót
was
to clean and to repair the vessel to make certain she would be ready to sail,
come summer. That was the time when the
Víkingrs
rode the seas.
They set sail for home when the first of the trees began to change color, so as
not to be caught without winter quarters, or upon the seas when they turned
rough and stormy with winter winds so cold that sometimes, to the west, the
Baltic Sea froze and the Kattegat became a solid mass of ice between Smaland,
Sjælland, and Jutland.

The
thegns
carefully
scraped the
Dragon
Fire's
sides
free of the now-dead marine life and debris, recaulked her strakes, and
retouched her paint where necessary. Then they shoved her over log rollers into
the harbor and moored her to the wharf, where they scrubbed her deck and
polished it with holystones until it shone as smooth as new, mended her square
red sail, and replaced oars too battered by heavy seas to be of further use.
She was not so grand a longship as some; still, Wulfgar's heart burst with
pride when he gazed at her bobbing on the waves. Almost, he could imagine that
she were his; and he dwelled on Yelkei's description of a man bold enough to
seize Olaf's markland at his death. Wulfgar rebelled at the thought of the
Dragon's Fire's
being dragged
inland and covered by the earth that would serve as Olaf's burial mound. Would
that she could be Wulfgar's own longship instead!

Olaf
had originally planned to go
a-víking
that summer down
the river Elbe, into Frisia and the Germanic kingdoms of the Southlands, where
good wines, fine weapons, jewelry, and cloth could be found, and pottery and
glass that could be traded in the marketplaces at Sliesthorp, Ribe, Kaupang,
and Birka. But that was before Yelkei slipped away one night from Ragnar's
hof
to Olaf's
own, where
Wulfgar lived now that he was Olaf's
thegn.
All along the
langpallar
of
Olaf's great mead hall stones were set to divide the raised side aisles into
sleeping quarters for his men. Wulfgar had been allotted one of these alcoves,
which afforded him and Yelkei a modicum of privacy as she bent near to him, her
black eyes glittering with such excitement that he knew, even before she said
as much, that she had news of great import. Still, she restrained herself long
enough to inquire about Wulfgar's welfare before saying, very low, so as not to
be overheard:

"Now,
then, do you listen sharp to me, Wulfgar, for here is a tale that could win a
bold man riches beyond counting! It happened that this day, a
skáld,
Sigurd Silkbeard
by name, came to Ragnar's great mead hall, from Jutland, where he traveled the
H
ærvej,
the Army Road, up from Sliesthorp to Schleswig, Jelling, Vor-Basse, and thence
to Viborg, with a small detour, on the way, to the marketplace at Ribe. 'Twas
there that this
skáld,
Sigurd Silkbeard, heard from a trader newly
arrived from the kingdoms of Britain that Cerdic, a prince of Mercia, is to wed
at summer's end. Prince Cerdic's bride is the only daughter of Pendragon, king
of Usk— which lies in the land of Walas, west of that dike built by the sea
wolf Offa, who was the Saxons' Bretwalda."

"Aye,
I am not so ignorant that I have not heard of this great earthwork, like the
Danevirke the mighty King Godfred of Jutland built to hold back the advance of
Charlemagne's Frankish hordes from the Southlands. But what has all this to do
with me, old woman?" Wulfgar asked, beginning to grow impatient.

"Hold
your tongue till I'm done with my story, and you shall learn," Yelkei
chided crossly, frowning at him. "And use the head on your shoulders for
more than turning a comely wench's eye! Think you that the only princess of Usk
goes empty-handed to her husband? Nay, she will carry a dowry of chests full of
silver and gold and jewels— and that alone worthy plunder! But the maiden
herself— if unharmed and yet a virgin— would be a hostage for whom either her
father or her betrothed would pay a large ransom. Do you doubt it?"

"Nay,
I do not. But if the
skáld
Sigurd
Silkbeard has told this tale in Ragnar's great mead hall, why, then Ragnar
himself will set out to capture both dowry and maiden; for he's no fool and not
slow to seek a prize that will prove to his advantage."

"Ordinarily,
nay. But he has burned his fingers more than once, stealing from the
kingdoms of
Britain, and there's a rich reward to be gained by the man who delivers
Ragnar's head on a silver plate to King Aella of Northumbria. If Ragnar seeks
to conquer all of Britain, he needs more treasure and
thegns
than even
he has at his command; and he dare not trust Björn Ironside or Hasting not to
sell him down the river Humber, to Aella, in York. So, instead, Ragnar sails up
the river Seine to sack Paris again; twenty years ago, from King Charles the
Bald, he got seven thousand pounds of silver there to take his plunder and to
go in peace, and it may be he thinks to get twice as much now, with which to
support an army. 'Tis your nemesis, Ivar the Boneless, whom Ragnar sends after
the princess of Usk— may the gods have mercy on her if she's as fair as Sigurd
claimed; for Ivar lusts for any pretty wench and won't scruple to play the
cheat by taking her maidenhead and then saying he did not."

"Aye,
well, that is no doubt the truth, and in that case, I am sorry for her,"
Wulfgar said as he thought of the many young women his oldest half brother had
raped on raids and brought home as his slaves. "For if her father or her
betrothed learn that Ivar's plowed her field, they may not think her worth
ransoming, and then she'll surely wind
up a slave and a whore of the
thegns—
as my poor mother did when Ragnar had tired of her. Still, none of this has
aught to do with me, old woman; so why do you tell me this tale?"

"Because
nine times this day, I cast the rune stones— for nine is a magic number—and
nine times, they spoke to me the same:
You
must go after this princess of
Usk, Wulfgar! Ivar does not sail for several days yet. If you can persuade Olaf
the Sea Bull that this venture is worth his while, you can be gone from the
Northland before Ivar leaves—and capture the prize yourself ere he discovers
that you seek it!"

"Art
mad, Yelkei?" Wulfgar stared at her, aghast. "What would that profit
me? Save to give Ragnar and Ivar a good excuse to declare a feud against Olaf
and to march on his markland. Moreover, whether seized by Ivar or Olaf, neither
the maiden nor her dowry would be mine. 'Tis mad you be— or else you grow
witless in your old age."

"Haaa!"
Yelkei snorted, a harsh sound like the call of the ravens that haunted the
woods along the strands. "You did not think so when I told you to seek
Olaf the Sea Bull as your
jarl.
But, so be it. There is no use wasting
good reindeer milk on a babe who refuses to suckle. I must return to Ragnar's
hof.
Thorkell
has concluded
his business and is leaving. 'Twas he who brought me here in his ox-cart, and
if I do not ride back, I must walk."