Hrolf Kraki's Saga Page 12

  Suddenly clangor awoke. Scrambling from the brush to take stance across the ruts came a host of armed men. Among them were a dozen giants, most byrnieless, who snarled and slavered and chewed their shield-rims.

  Helgi reared his horse. "What in Loki's name?" he cried.

  His chief skipper said: "I think King Adhils does not mean for you to keep what he gave."

  "No—no, Yrsa—" Helgi half turned, as if to retreat for the first time in his life.

  At his rear, around a bend in the road, came more men. They must have taken a side-way out of Uppsala— even this far off and past the noseguards on their helmets, Helgi knew some—and lurked till he had gone by them.

  Helgi got down to earth, unslung his shield from the horse's crupper and took it by the handgrip. Tall he loomed among his men; only his banner, flapping in a heavily rising breeze, overtopped him. "Well, we're between the stone and the hammer," he said. "But they may find us tougher metal than they reckoned on."

  River and steep, overgrown bank gave no room for the swine-array, a wedge-shaped line of mailed men with archers and slingers behind. Crowded together, death hailing from fore and aft, the Danes raised war-shout and charged ahead as best they could. In their van ran King Helgi. His sword hissed out of its sheath, blazed and screamed.

  It sped against the first of the Swedes, himself big in a bright chain-coat. His shield took the blow, but he must lurch. Helgi pressed in, yelling. His blade leaped, up, down, around, dinning on helm and shield-rim, ever driving the man backward, in among his fellows. The Swede thought he saw a chance to chop at Helgi's thigh. He tried, and his sword-arm spurted blood. He swayed and sank under trampling feet.

  An ax boomed on Helgi's own shield. That weapon, wielded two-handed, by its weight can smash through most men's guard. Helgi sprang in. Sheer strength warded off those blows. He got his blade beneath the ax-haft and cut a leg from under his foeman.

  A spear-thrust took him in the calf. He hardly marked it. "Forward, forward!" He knew how to fling a cry from the depths of his lungs, so it soared above every shout, grunt, thud, rattle, and death-moan. "Hew past them! Win free!" For he saw, above the swaying helmets and twisted faces, that if his folk could break through those who confronted them, there would be none at their backs. Turning, they could hold the road against onslaught while they withdrew, and most of them might yet win to their ships.

  That could be a long running battle. He moved against a berserker. Hemmed in, he could not get up speed. The monster swung an ax aloft and brought it down in a doomsday crash. Helgi's shield splintered. His left arm nearly did. He staggered back. He would have attacked the berserker afresh, but too many roiled in the way.

  Men of his fought stubbornly at his side. One by one, outnumbered, they were slain. Spears pierced him where he was not helmed or byrnied; his blood and sweat squelched in his shoes; the blows upon his metal might go through, but made bruises down to the bone. Still he fought. His blade raved and reaped.

  A berserker won to his standard bearer. That youth had no hope. Brains spattered, he toppled, and the flag went into the dust. Thereafter the Danes had nothing to tell them where they should stand. The Golden Boar waved on high. The Swedes pressed in.

  Clouds drew blue-black over heaven, wind arose cold, the light turned a weird brass-yellow.

  Helgi, cut off from the last of his men, backed up, fighting one-handed with a sword whose edge was dinted and blunted. The dead and the hurt marked his path. Still the foe came after him. He waded out into the river, which his blood reddened. Ketil, foremost berserker, met him there, howling, yowling, hurling blow after blow like the hailstones that now began to fall, yet never seeming to feel any that the king landed upon him.

  Men heard Helgi croak, "Garm breaks loose. He has swallowed the moon—" He fell, and the river bore seaward what little was left of his blood.

  Together with him died all who had gone ashore. The rest got word from scouts and fled back to Denmark. Yrsa wept. Here ends the tale of King Helgi.

  THE TALE OF SVIPDAG

  I

  Yrsa wept.

  She had not known what Adhils had ordered until the thing was done. Upon him she wished every kind of ill, that his ship not sail though the wind be fair, that his horse not run though he would flee his killers, that his sword never bite till it sang about his own head—"not that you are one for ship or horse or sword, you womanish spell-cooker, you crow feeding on corpses!"

  Adhils waited out her wrath in that watchful calm which frightened men. When she was only crying, he said easily: "I could not behave otherwise. Well you know Helgi would at last—and not very far from today, either —have sought to overthrow and kill me, and bear you off to a life of shame that you yourself had run from."

  Yrsa swallowed her tears, met his gaze so the clang could almost be heard, and told him: "It is not seemly for you to preen yourself over having betrayed that man to whom I owed the most and whom I loved the most, and for this sake I will never be true to you when you have to deal with King Helgi's men. And I will see about having your berserkers that slew him done away with, as soon as I can find lads bold enough to do it for me and their own renown."

  "You rant, Yrsa, and it's empty, and well you know that," Adhils said. "Supposing I let you go, where would you seek to? Bring no threats against me or my berserkers, for this you will have no gain of. But I will make good with rich gifts the slaying of your father, with treasure and the best of lands, if you like."

  The queen departed, to return in a while and stonily accept his offer. Some wondered why she did not, instead, try to reach King Hroar in Denmark. Their fellows thought belike she had a threefold reason. She, daughter and bride of King Helgi, would not flee like an outlaw and come like a beggar. Nor would she forego the washing and laying out of him, the closing of his eyes, the binding of hell-shoes onto his feet, with her own hands, and seeing that he and his followers got a burial worthy of them and that honors would ever after be paid at the howe. Nor would she give up hope of revenge; already it was plain that Hroar would not take any.

  None saw the queen glad thereafter. The unfriendliness in the hall was worse than before. After trying once, Adhils no longer shared a bed with her. As often as she saw a chance to do so, she went straight against his will. Doubtless he kept her only because of her kindred, her Swedish following, and her dowry.

  Meanwhile the ships had brought the news to Denmark. Hrolf Helgisson was not alone in crying for war. "That lies beyond our might," said his uncle; "but do not think I lack grief for my brother." And he went away, hood drawn over his head, to mourn alone.

  Later a craft from Svithjodh made landfall. The chieftain aboard spoke for Adhils. Though Helgi had fallen on his own deeds, said the message, in that he schemed against the lord in Uppsala, yet the latter was willing to make a settlement which would keep peace between the two kingdoms.

  Hroar took weregild for Helgi and gave oath to bear no spear on account of the slaying.

  Adhils had looked for this. Else he might never have dared strike. Through his spies and, maybe, his sorceries, he knew well how things stood for the Skjoldung house just then. The truth was, Hroar had such troubles that he could not afford strife with Svithjodh.

  His brother-in-law Sævil, Jarl of Scania, had lately died. Saevil's son Hrok was a surly and greedy young man who felt he was owed much because of the help his father had given Hroar and Helgi. When refused the great ring which

  Fenja and Menja had ground forth, he raged off. In part for the sake of Hrok's mother, Hroar's sister Signy, and in part for fear of uproar, the king did not want to cast him out of his seat. But Scania was no longer held in a way that Hroar could fully trust.

  Furthermore, an undertaking of his had gone awry and he knew there would be war elsewhere.

  His uncle Frodhi, whom he had helped burn, had had a son Ingjald by his first wife, Borghild of Saxland. He had sent the child off to be reared by the grandfather, a strong king who lived where the Elbe meets the
sea. Now Ingjald was getting along in life; but he was a powerful chieftain and likely to become king after his present kinsman on the high seat. And he was lately widowed. Hroar thought such an ally would make safe his flank to the southwest; it would not matter any more that a Swedish jarl sat on the island of Als and had the ear of the king in Slesvik. Hroar would gain a firm peace which would leave him free to build up his realm.

  He hoped to marry his daughter Freyvar to her cousin Ingjald.

  Messengers went back and forth, and at first everything looked promising. But it happened that Starkadh was at the Saxon burg.

  About him goes a long saga. He was of Jötun descent, they say, and born with six hands. Thor ripped off four of them, yet always hated him for his kindred. When Odin, who fostered him, said he should have three men's lifespans, Thor said he must do a nithing deed in each of them. Odin gave him the best of weapons; Thor ordered that never would he own any land. Odin said he would always have money; Thor said he would never have enough. Odin gave him victory in every fray, Thor that he should always be wounded. Odin made him the foremost of skalds; Thor made him forget his staves once he had spoken them. Huge, harsh, and unhappy, Starkadh walks like a storm through that hundred-year, and ever his coming means trouble.

  At the wedding feast of Ingjald and Freyvar he stood forth, upbraided the groom for thus linking with the get of the man who murdered his father, and roared forth verses which brought blood to seething. Danes and Saxons alike remembered what they had suffered from each other. It came to blows and deaths. Ingjald thrust Freyvar from him and sent her home bearing word that he himself, for his honor, would bring a brand to set Hart afire.

  Thus Hroar could not have the warriors of Svithjodh on his back.

  That Yule Eve, Hrolf the son of Helgi passed his twelfth year and could be reckoned a man. When the boar was passed around for the making of vows, he laid hand upon it and swore: "Never will I flee from fire or iron!"

  Men shouted he was indeed his father's son. Still, some thought he did more than favor his uncle: that in his quietness and dreaminess he might become one of the sluggard Skjoldungs. After all, his had been a strange birth, and he had a sister who was more eldritch than that.

  The doubters changed their minds in the following summer. When the Saxons came across the Little Belt, the Danes met them on the shores of Fyn and a battle took place which brought wolves and ravens from wide around. Hrolf lacked his full growth, which would never be great, and of course he needed the help of older men. Nonetheless he went forward so doughtily and, for his age, so skillfully that he won the goodwill of every warrior.

  In clang and clash, shout and shriek, maiming and manslaughter, the Danes rolled back the Saxons and crushed them utterly. There fell Ingjald, the son of Frodhi.

  There too fell Hrodhmund, eldest son of Hroar.

  In sorrow the Dane-King went home. From then on, his only care was to have peace. This may well have been because his younger son Hrörik, though a year ahead of Hrolf, had made a poor showing.

  And the next few years made plain that it was in Hrörik, not Hrolf, that the bad blood ran. Hrörik was lazy, cowardly, and greedy. About him clustered a gang of bully boys and toadies, and he soon learned how to flatter this headman, bribe that one, and threaten yonder.

  His swiftly aging father turned more and more to the nephew Hrolf.

  Queen Valthjona died.

  A cookfire broke loose and Hart burned down.

  Hrörik and his father were on a ship to Scania, where the king would lead the rites of Harvest, reminding the folk there of himself, overawing and—he hoped—befriending Hrok Sævilsson. The journey over the Sound is short, and those aboard were clad in their best. Upon Hroar's arm gleamed the serpent ring.

  "You should give me that," said Hrörik. He was quite drunk.

  "I had it from my brother," said Hroar, "and I will bear it till I die."

  "Well, let me see it, anyhow," his son urged him. "It's supposed to be the top treasure we have, now your hall is gone, but never have I gotten a real look at it."

  Hroar took the ring off and handed it over. Hrörik turned it between his fingers. The eyes of the snake which girdles the world glittered red. "Well," said the youth, "best might be that neither of us has it." And he cast the ring overboard.

  The coxswain's chant broke and the oars sprattled wildly. A moan went down the length of the hull. This was the worst of signs.

  Hroar drew a fold of his cloak over his gray head.

  He died that winter.

  Hrörik had readied himself, though he hardly needed to. Hrolf would not stand against the son of the man who had been like a father to him. Therefore the Danes hailed Hrörik their king.

  Almost at once, those lands which Helgi had laid under him began to fall away. More than olden pride brought that about. The headmen had no faith in an overlord known for his sloth and miserliness. When he made only the feeblest of tries to get them back, they felt they had weighed him rightly. "Not being fools," they said, "henceforward we look to ourselves."

  The heaviest loss came when the jarl at Odense—Odin's Lake—said he would be king as his father had been.

  Here was a town as big as Roskilde and far older, the holiest stead in Denmark. Soon the island of Fyn had everywhere forsworn Leidhra.

  Robbers fared forth, vikings harried the coats, Jute and Saxon and Wend raided with ease and laid plans for all-out war.

  Then the Zealand chieftains got together and rose up. Hrolf told them he would not fight his kinsman. They told him that they would, whatever he said, and afterward take him for their lord.

  Raging, Hrörik sent men to the house where Hrolf lived. Barely did the atheling escape alive. Thereafter he had no way out of unsheathing his sword against the son of his uncle and aunt, whom he had loved.

  Hrörik fell in battle. Warriors and yeomen swarmed about the Thingstone to roar that Hrolf, son of Helgi, was now their king. In sorrow he clasped the oath-rings and took over the lordship of a land breaking asunder.

  Meanwhile Adhils in Svithjodh had waxed rich and mighty, till men reckoned it a high honor to serve him.

  II

  West of the lowlands which Uppsala overlooks, the mountains of Svithjodh rise high, steep, and thickly wooded: a land of eagle and bear, rushing streams and deep dales. There dwelt a yeoman named Svip. His garth stood far from others, yet was of goodly size and housed many folk, for he was well-to-do. In youth he had been a bold warrior and fared widely about. He was wiser than he looked—a burly, squinting, grizzled man with a broken nose—and made his own judgments of everything. Though no wizard, he was thought by some to have the farsight, and sure it was that he often got warning dreams.

  He had three sons, Hvitserk, Beigadh, and Svipdag. All were strong, able, and handsome. In spite of being the youngest, Svipdag overtopped his brothers in both height and might.

  When he was eighteen winters old, he sought out his father one day and said forth what he had long been brooding on: "This is a dreary life, sitting up here among the fells and never even visiting others or seeing them here with us. We should go join King Adhils and his warriors, if he'll take us in."

  Svip the yeoman frowned and answered, "I don't think that would be wise, I know King Adhils of old. His words can be foul as well as fair, however great his promises. And his men are bold enough, but an ill-behaved crew." He sighed in his foreknowledge and added, "However, King Adhils is both strong and famous."

  Svipdag raised a fist. "Something must be risked to win something, and none may know before it's happened how his luck will twist around. This I do know, that here I will sit no longer, whatever may lie before me."

  The yeoman gazed upon his son a while. Tall, wide-shouldered, raw-boned, the yellow beard already thick on his ruddy craggy face, Svipdag stood with mane held aloft to shine beneath the sun, against green pines and blue heaven. Hay harvest was just past and the steading full of that sweet smell of peace. "Well-a-day," said Svip, "I have myself been y
oung."

  Hvitserk and Beigadh decided to follow their parents' wish and stay home at least a while longer. For the out-faring one, Svip brought forth goodly gifts: a horse big enough that the rider's feet would not dangle to the ground, the full gear of a fighting man, and a long ax, darkly gleaming and sharp. He offered many such redes as: "Never thrust yourself on others, and never brag; that wins naught save a bad name. But if anyone presses on you, then guard yourself, for the way of a skilled man is to speak softly, but in danger to go strongly forward." He had no fears for Svipdag in a fray. Himself their teacher, the brothers had spent hour upon battering hour, almost every day of their lives, training in the use of weapons.

  So Svipdag hugged his kindred, his best friends among the garth-folk, and whatever girl he had lately been lying with, and rode off. For a while his song floated back to them. At last it was gone in the noise of a waterfall.

  Not seeming especially safe to attack, he met no trouble.

  His cheerfulness brightened houses where he Stayed overnight. Asking his way, he learned that King Adhils and Queen Yrsa were not in Uppsala, but at a place they owned on the shore of Lake Malar. She spent much time there, each summer, and he was making his royal rounds.

  Svipdag arrived on an eventide. Woods and grainfields rolled broadly down to a vast sheet of water, the glow of level sunbeams across it broken by the upthrusts of islands. The air was cool, damp, very still save for shouts and clatters from the dwelling, sounds which echoed about before they lost themselves in the sky. Svipdag reined in at a gate of bars set in a stockade around hall and outbuildings. It was latched on the inside, and nobody warded it. Men swarmed about the courtyard beyond, either playing or watching a swift game of handball. Svipdag called to be let in. The few who heard merely glanced his way and went on with their sport.