Hrolf Kraki's Saga Read online

  "Not that man."

  "That very one. I was saying—in spite of your coupling aforetime, like that bitch I named you after; in spite of your treating him today in such wise that he could rightfully bring war—Adhils is patient. This has to be more than luck. A Norn stands nigh, and your doom is to become the queen in Svithjodh."

  Hoo-hoo went the owl. Yrsa cowered as if it were her that it hunted.

  "Much worse could that doom be," Olof pursued. "Much worse will it be, if you let your folly grow into madness. I have no heirs, Yrsa. The Alsmen will not take you to rule them when I'm dead, nor could you if they did. What would you rather be, the prey of some viking, the willy-nilly leman of some grubby little chieftain, or the lady of high Uppsala? What's worthy of a Skjoldung?"

  "No," Yrsa beseeched, "no, no, no."

  "If you are his queen," Olof said, "Adhils will have a claim on this kingdom too. He can set a jarl over it when I'm gone, a strong man who'll keep it safe. Otherwise— well, think of your foster-siblings on the north coast. Think of brothers lying dead, ravens picking out their eyes; think of sisters ravaged and dragged off to rum a stranger's quern. Then they will say her mother did well to name Yrsa for a dog!"

  Olof rose and walked out. Yrsa wept.

  Next day she was steady of mien. When Adhils came, she gave him careful greeting. He offered her more gifts, ornaments and costly stuffs. She did not say aloud that she would be wearing those things anyhow, did she become his wife.

  After a pair of weeks between him and her mother, Yrsa bowed her weary head and said, "Yes."

  While the Swedes sailed off, bearing the bride away, Olof stood on the strand looking after them. As the last hull dropped below world-edge, she laughed and cried: "That's another for you, Helgi!"

  She lived only a few years further. A growth killed her.

  VIII

  When King Helgi got the news, he grew even heavier of mood and withdrew altogether to his shack.

  This building he had made himself, hewing logs as if they were foemen, in the thinly peopled north of Zealand. At need he would walk several miles to the nearest farmstead and pay for food and beer. The wagoner who brought it never lingered, and nobody came calling. They said his was a haunted ground. At its back stretched a wilderness of low, storm-twisted trees and brush. Before it, heath, broken here and there by thickets, rolled off toward a fen where mists were ever swirling and dripping. In sight of the house lifted a gaunt ridge, into which the Old Folk had once sunk a stone-lined chamber.

  Scant game was around, a few deer, mostly hares and squirrels and other scuttering frightened things; yet wolves often howled. The fen drew waterfowl whose wings and clamor could fill the sky; but men hunted nowhere near those deep, green-scummed pools. Birds of prey and carrion lived off the flocks, eagle, kestrel, osprey, goshawk, merlin, kite, crow, raven, chough, and more and more. Helgi took fledglings and tried to tame them. He failed, mainly because he was always drunk. But he did like lying on his back in the springy ling, watching how they soared and wheeled.

  When winter drew over him, he could watch no longer.

  That Yule Eve got bad weather. In Roskilde, in Leidhra, in homes everywhere through Denmark, humans drew close, stoked fires, raised good cheer like a wall between themselves and the beings which prowled this night. Helgi bolted flatbread and stockfish, swilled down many hornsful of beer, and lurched to his bed of straw and bearskins. He did leave a stone lamp burning.

  After a while he woke and frowned into gloom. The chamber was bitterly chill; night seemed to breathe out of the clay floor. Wind hooted. Where it found an unchinked crack between logs, it fluttered fingers across his nakedness. A different sound, a weak whimpering and scratching at the door . . . why had it roused him?

  Some stray beast? His head felt eerily clear, as if he had drunk no common beer but instead had tasted the mead they say Odin brews for his midnight guests. He thought it would not be kingly to leave a living creature outside when he could save it.

  Rising, he took the lamp, groped his way over hoar-frosted hardness, through bobbing huge shadows, to unlatch and open the door. Snow hissed on the wind. A nearly shapeless heap of gray rags huddled shuddering on the threshold. He stooped, urged the poor thing inside, closed the door again and lifted the lamp for a better look.

  It was a girl. She was scrawny as death. Lank black hair fell around an ill-shaped skull wherein clattered what teeth had not rotted away. Her feet were bare and swollen from frostbite. She squatted on the floor, hugged herself with blue hands at the end of broomstick arms, and moaned. He heard: "You have done well, King."

  Helgi made a face. However—he set the lamp back down on the ground, took the two or three strides needful to cross the room, bent over and began to pluck straw and a pelt from his bed. "Put this around yourself and you won't freeze," he said.

  "No, let me get in by you," whined the beggar girl. "Let me lie against you. Else I'll die. I'm so cold, so cold."

  Helgi scowled. But having taken her as his guest, he could do naught else than say: "That's much against my wish. Still, if you must, then he here at my feet in your clothes. That can't harm me." He hoped her fleas and lice had already perished.

  Like an ungainly spider, she crawled where he bade her and pulled a skin over herself. Helgi got back in the straw and stretched out his legs. The forlorn wench could at least take warmth from his soles, he thought.

  What was this? They did not touch filthy tatters or rickety bones. No, a silkiness glowed; the tingle of it went through the whole of him.

  He sat up and hauled back the fell. There lay a woman in a sheening sark. Never had he seen any this beautiful. The straw hardly crackled as she rose to her knees and smiled at him. Full breasts and hips thrust against her garment, shone through it; their sweetness overwhelmed all winter chill and stench, he was suddenly drowned in summer. Raven's-wing locks flowed past a face pale and strange, too cleanly carven to be wholly human. Her eyes were the unblinking gold of a hawk's.

  "But—but you—" Fear jabbed him. He scrambled backward and made the sign of the Hammer. She smiled, and fright whirled out of head and heart. Dim though the lamplight was, it gleamed off her skin, driving murk from everywhere indoors. Far and faint seemed the yowling wind. Shaky-armed, he reached for her.

  She nearly sang: "Now I must go from here. You have saved me from sore need, for a spell was laid on me by my stepmother. I have sought many kings. You alone, Helgi Halfdansson, had the courage to do what would set me free."

  "It took no courage." As he touched her, his manhood arose.

  She saw, and lifted a hand. "No," she said softly, "you must not lie with me. I will stay here no longer."

  He gripped her and answered in upward-tumbling blitheness: "Well, you won't get leave to fare off that soon. We'll not part thus."

  She took him by the shoulders. The feel of her went through him to his marrow. "You have done me good, Helgi. I'd not be the means of bringing woe on your house."

  "You bring greater joy than I can tell you," he babbled. ‘I’ll wed you as early as may be. Tonight—"

  Sorrow dimmed those falcon eyes. "As you will, lord." Then they flamed, and she cast off her sark and came to him.

  Long, long afterward, morning stole wolf-gray across a white and silent world. He had loved her more often and burningly than he had known lay in the might of any man. Stirring half out of sleep, in the dimness he saw her stand above him. She was clad. Where had her green gown and cloak come from, or the red wreath of rowan about her head? She bent down, laid a finger across his lips, and told him most quietly:

  "So you have had your will, King. Know, we got a child together. When you took me in, I wished you well; and I do not yet wish you ill. Do as I say, and it may be we can still halt the bad luck you have sown in my womb. Our child must be born undersea; for mine is the blood of Ran. Be down by your boathouses, this time next winter, and look for her." Pain crossed her mouth. "If you fail, the Skjoldungs will suffer."

&n
bsp; King Helgi thought that then she fared away. When he came fully awake, she was gone.

  He went out into the snowfields, and saw her in every blue shadow and in every glimmer off ice; after the short day ended and the stars blinked forth, she whispered around him. She was not Yrsa, though, a heart wrenched out to leave a bleeding hollowness. Elven, she was like a wind of springtime, soon gone, never really remembered, bequeathing newly unfolded blossoms.

  He found that he had back both his manhood and his will to be a man. Singing, he rode home to Leidhra.

  Hroar had done what he could in the years of his brother's despair. Nevertheless much had gone agley. A king was a great landholder, a great owner of trade goods and merchant ships. Helgi's stewards and skippers dared do little without orders which were seldom forthcoming. He took matters in hand and shortly set them aright. Likewise did he with the kingdom, and his brother and his sister-in-law, and his son Hrolf.

  Busy as he was—among womankind as well—he forgot what his elf-love had asked of him. Indeed, she seemed so strange to everything else he knew, he sometimes wondered if she had been a dream and no more. Then who had sent the dream and what did it mean? These were daunting thoughts. He pushed them aside, he plunged back into the world of men.

  On the third Yule Eve, he was again alone in that house near the barrow.

  He supposed it was happenstance. A man, lately outlawed for murder, had been skulking about those parts and wreaking harm. When Helgi passed through, the yeomen asked his help. "Scant use to hunt him with a flock of beaters," laughed the king. "Well, maybe I and my hounds can track him by ourselves." They did. Helgi slew the fellow and took his head to show. By then, twilight was on him, and he recalled his hut. Undwelt in for three years, it was a cheerless enough place to keep this night However, its walls gave some Ice.

  About midnight, the baying of his dogs roused Helgi. He took his sword and went to the door. The sky had become very clear and quiet. Stars frosted a vast blackness; the Bridge glowed silver-cold; snow shone beneath, save where the mound with the tomb reared.

  Three men and a woman sat horses which shimmered wan and changeable as waterfalls, long-maned, long-tailed, hoofs making the frozen snow not creak but ring—elven horses. The men were clad in byrnies that chimed, in shirts and trews and cloaks where wavered faint rainbows, in boots whose golden chasings flickered like fire. Their heads were too beautiful to be human. The woman—Helgi knew the woman.

  She leaned down. In awe, he dropped his weapon to take the sealskin bundle she laid in his arms. Sadness freighted her tone: "King, your kinsmen must pay because you cared naught about what I wished. Yet wed shall it be for you yourself, that you loosed me from my wretchedness. Here is our daughter. I have named her Skuld."

  Swifter than flesh, those horses fled off across the world.

  Helgi never saw the elf-woman again. He stood holding a child asleep, who hight Skuld: That Which Shall Be.

  IX

  Then grief came back upon him. He kept from his former wildness and drunkenness, dwelt in Leidhra and steered things well. But he spoke hardly more than he must, never laughed, and went for many long rides alone or sat staring hour after hour into the fire.

  Hroar learned of this, and toward spring bid him to Hart for Blessing. That was a mild and early year. Hawthorns were white across the land, roads dry and heaven full of songbirds, when the kings rode forth from the temple just behind Frey's wagon. Bright was the gold of the shrine thereon which hid the god's image; stately was the lady chosen to attend him for the month; garlanded were the oxen which drew them, and garlanded the Roskilde girls who danced forth to meet them. Song lilted through the lusty mirth of swains; snow-water gurgled in every ditch; trees lifted branches across which a goddess had strewn the first frail green, into a heaven of slanting sunbeams and towering clouds; cattle stood rust-red in the mists that steamed off paddocks; a breeze blew cool and damp, swollen by the smells of growth.

  Coalsack nights and huddling indoors were ended. Day had come again. New life was on its way; one could all but hear how the soil stirred. Let joy rise with the rising sap. Let man rise too, and plow his woman over and over, so that Frey and the land-elves would not fail to make fruitful our mother the earth! After the god's wagon had gone from Roskilde to carry him around the shire, there was a feast. As ever, folk left early, hand in hand, not only young ones but the gravest of householders and wives.

  Helgi sat cheerless. What words he had were mostly for his son Hrolf, asking how the boy did, what he planned. At eleven, Hrolf was slim and on the short side. He moved like a deer, though, and rich garb sat well on him. His hair was a deeper shade of yellow, with reddish tints, than was his father's. His eyes were big and gray under dark brows—Yrsa's eyes—and much of her lay in his clear-skinned face, along with the jutting Skjoldung chin. He answered readily. Otherwise he was himself apt to stay quiet, watching what the rest did and thinking his own thoughts.

  That night Helgi slept alone.

  Hroar sought him out in the morning. "Come, let's go for a ride," said the older brother. Helgi nodded. Grooms saddled horses for them and they trotted briskly off. Their guards saw they meant to talk, and fell well behind.

  The bay sparkled, woods breathed and burgeoned, wind whooped. High overhead went a flight of storks. At length Hroar said: "I'd not tell you what to do, Helgi. Still, some will call it a bad sign that you, a king, were so glum at the offering and the feast, and later gave none of your seed to a woman."

  Helgi sighed. "Let them."

  "You told me how the elf warned of trouble to come. Well, trouble always comes, of one kind or another, and she said she at least bears good will toward you. As for that girl-child—"

  Helgi turned to him and said hoarsely: "I'll tell you what the matter is. Seeing her a second time, finding she was real after all, and ever since then seeing our daughter, who cries too seldom and whose eyes are too sharp for a baby ... I remember Yrsa."

  "What? I thought you'd put her out of your mind."

  "Never. Oh, I found I could live without her. But . . . I know not ... the Other Folk do eldritch things to our hearts . . . maybe I hark back to Yrsa because I'm afraid to dwell on her who sought me—and meanwhile Hrolf, the son Yrsa and I got together, who has her eyes—"

  Helgi slumped. "She goes about in Uppsala, not gladly from what I hear," he mumbled. "I sit in the home that was ours and grow old."

  Hroar peered at his brother. Bones stood forth in Helgi's face, his skin was deeply furrowed, grayness had begun to dull his locks. Hroar ran a hand across his own grizzled beard and said, "We all grow old."

  "Need we rot before we are dead?" rasped Helgi.

  "We've mighty works ahead of us yet." Hroar tried to smile. "Anyhow, I said to cheer you, you've won the fondness of a most powerful being—"

  He broke off, because suddenly his waymate jerked straight upright in the saddle. The hair stirred on Helgi's arms; he stared before him and hissed like a lynx.

  "What is it?" asked Hroar in unease.

  Helgi lifted a fist. Iron rang through his tone: "By the Hammer! You're right! Why should I mope out my days?"

  Hroar began, "Good, I'm glad to hear—" His brother's shout cut through:

  "I'll go to Uppsala and fetch her back!" "What?" Hroar cried. "No!"

  It rushed from Helgi: "Yes. Hear me. I've brooded on this, till in a flash you made me see—" He gripped Hroar's forearm with force that left fingermarks. "I, I do have the goodwill of one who stands high among the Others, is of the very blood of Ran. I fathered her child, that I'm rearing myself. Would she let harm come on her own daughter? Why need I further fear any curse? Why need you, or the Dane-lands? Need we ever have? Would Hrolf be as fair and promising as he is, were there a doom in his begetting? No, our grief was from none but that she-wolf

  Olof. who's dead now, may she never walk again." He lifted his hands to the sky and yelled. "We're free!"

  "No man is free of his weird," said Hroar. Helgi heard him n
ot, but instead struck spurs to horse and was off in a breakneck gallop.

  There followed a whirlwind of making ready. Feverishly mirthful, Helgi overbore every naysayer. His household troopers were so glad to see fresh heart in him that they would have followed him anywhere. Those who had been to Uppsala aforetime told such tales of it that young men swarmed off the steadings to help crew the ships, as soon as the planting was done.

  "We'll fare in peace," Helgi made known. "If Adhils will grant my wish, I can offer him good terms on outstanding questions such as the amber trade. If not . . . Adhils is unwise."

  In vain did Hroar protest, "Bjovulf and I worked hard and spent men to get an Yngling who would not be our foe. Do you want to spill this on the ground, for the sake of your own lust?"

  "What threat is that sluggard?" Helgi scoffed. "We could plunder up and down his coasts, and he'd never stir from his bloody altar stones." He tightened. "I'd count myself no fit lord, did I leave my Yrsa with one who gives her woe."

  A single time he was taken aback. He and his boy Hrolf had gone hawking. Their bird struck down a crane. Helgi said into the sunlight: "Thus will I bring your mother to you."

  Hrolf answered gravely: "Dead like yonder prey?" "What do you mean?"

  "They tell me she left us against your will. It may be against hers to come back."

  Helgi stood still in the blowing air for some while before he said, tight-lipped, "Well, I'll have given her the chance."

  Speaking alone with her husband, Queen Valthjona uttered the same doubt: "If I know Yrsa, Helgi will have had this trip for nothing."

  "I hope the upshot is no worse than that," fretted Hroar.