Hrolf Kraki's Saga (19 page)

Svipdag bore this news to Uppsala. The king thanked him much. Queen Yrsa said before the packed hall: “In truth, better men are housed here when one man like Svipdag sits among us, than when your berserkers did.”

Sourly, the king agreed. He gave a feast and gifts to the warriors. It was as nothing to what the queen gave a week later.

The year wore away. Svipdag became marshal of the guard, which brought him a herd of duties. He was likewise often out hunting, fishing, boating, swimming, visiting as well as being visited. In his house, besides servants, he kept a lively wench or two. Yet he found ever more excuses to see Yrsa. Her husband glowered.

Meanwhile the berserkers who were left brooded on their hatred. They gathered a larger gang than before, and early next summer sailed back to Svithjodh. It seemed to them they had made a mistake earlier in landing near Uppsala, where the king’s crack fighters were on hand.
This time they left their ships well north, on the Gulf of Bothnia, and trekked overland to the mountains, thence southward till they reached the country of the Westmen. From there they meant to strike swiftly at Uppsala. Along the way they plundered, slew, tortured, raped, laid waste, and drew into their band every kind of outlaw and evildoer.

Word reached Adhils. Again he bade Svipdag go against them. This time he would have fewer folk than erstwhile—a third fewer than the wolf pack—for the berserkers had also chosen their season craftily. Able-bodied men were scattered far and wide getting in the crops.

“I’ll take a different way with the household troops,” said Adhils, “more roundabout, that the foe be unaware. We can arrive at the same time as you, who’ll be kept to the pace of older yeomen and untrained lads among those we can summon. Meet the foe head-on. When he has thought for none save you, I’ll fall on him from behind.”

Svipdag scowled. “Lord, it won’t be easy, keeping track not just of the vikings but of each other.”

“We’ll use scouts and runners,” said Adhils loftily, and would hear no more.

Yrsa found a chance to walk with Svipdag, down by the gleaming river, none but an old deaf tirewoman to watch them. “I fear for you,” she said in woe. “I feel in my marrow, Adhils thinks it’ll do no harm if you lose and bite the hillside. Then those madmen can be talked into supposing their honor is avenged. They can be bought off cheaply, or even”—a crawling went over her—“taken back among us.”

He looked down at the bent head and answered low, “All men must dree their weirds. Yet what you fear shall not happen while blood remains in me, my lady.”

She cast him a look he had seen before, in the eyes of a netted swan.

Awkward though their hastily gathered levy was, Svipdag and his captains arrived sooner than the berserkers had awaited. In a dale of steep red walls and rushing waters, under greenwood and across flowery meadows, a hard fight began.

The berserkers had whipped their unruly followers into a team. Back and back they drove the raw, outnumbered Swedes. Never a sign was there of the king or his trained household troops.

Now it is to be told of Svip the yeoman, that he awakened from sleep, sighed deeply and said to Hvitserk and Beigadh: “Sore is the need of Svipdag, your brother, for he’s in battle not far hence and has great odds against him. He’s lost an eye and gotten many wounds besides. Three berserkers has he felled; three are left.”

Swiftly they armed themselves and what men they could get, and hastened to where their father had told them. When they reached the dale, strife was still going on in the light night. By then, the vikings had twice as many as Svipdag. Mightily had he fought, but he reeled from his hurts and his men lay slain in windrows. And still the king had not come to help him.

Yet the foe were also worn down. It is no slight thing to wield iron hour after hour; and they too had suffered wounds and losses aplenty. The fray had broken into knots of men who lurched about, battering with weapons blunted into clubs, or crept away and struggled for breath. Upon this burst a band small but fresh, well-led, bearing newly whetted steel, and wild for revenge.

The brothers went straight to where the berserkers were, and the swapping of blows ended in the deaths of the latter. It needed only a few more killings for fear to sweep through the outlaw gang. Svipdag’s men rallied and joined a charge on them. They broke. Those who asked for their lives gave themselves over to the brothers. A huge booty fell likewise to these.

Because they wanted to go home, and anyhow no garth hereabouts could feed them all, the Swedes returned straight to Uppsala. Svipdag went along on a litter, in the care of his brothers. He had swooned and they were unsure whether he would live.

Reaching the burg and royal hall, they found Adhils already there. He thanked them aloud for this work of manhood, lamenting that he had lost touch with the levy and been unable to find it in time. But erelong word
leaked out that the king had been near the spot and forbidden his troop to go further.

Svipdag bore grievous hurts. Worst were two gashes on his arms and one in his head, which must be sewn up. And his left eye was gone. Sickness came into his flesh. Long he lay in a coalbed of fever, muttering or raving or heavily adrowse. Queen Yrsa tended him. She paid no heed to pus and stink, she washed and soothed him as if he had been her own child or her own man, and when he began to mend, she brought him milk and broth and spent as many hours at his bedside as he could stay awake.

Healing at last, gaunt and slow-moving, he went between his brothers to stand before Adhils, at eventide in the hall. “How good to see you back,” said the king, not as if he meant it. “What would you of me?”

“Leave to go,” said Svipdag. He kept his gaze from Yrsa, who gasped and brought a hand to her lips. “I’ll seek a lord who shows me more honor than you. Ill have you paid me for warding this land and for the victories I must win on your behalf.”

“Well, I have said it was only bad luck which kept me from joining you. Stay, you three brothers, and I will do well by you. None shall stand higher.”

Svipdag held himself from telling the king he lied; and as for Adhils, he did not really urge them to abide. His eyes kept shifting aglitter toward Yrsa. She sat dumb. Soon Adhils asked whither they meant to fare.

“We’ve not decided that yet,” Svipdag admitted. “I do want to learn the ways of other folk and other kings, and not grow old here in Svithjodh.”

“Well,” said Adhils happily, “to show I’ve no hard feelings, I promise you safe conduct should you ever come visit us.”

Svipdag looked at Yrsa. “I will,” he said.

In the morning the brothers busked themselves to go. When they were ready, Svipdag sought the queen in her bower. The room where she and her maidens were stood open to sight of trees, whose rustling blew in on a green-smelling wind, and to a heaven where clouds wandered
white. She stared long at him, his face scarred and aged, bones jutting under sallow skin, a black patch where an eye had been. Silence grew.

“I would … thank you … my lady,” he said at length, very softly, “for the honor you have shown me.”

“Little enough,” she answered, herself scarcely to be heard beneath the wind outside. “Now Helgi sleeps well. And I, I need no more see his murderers daily about me.” The distaff fell from her hands. She reached out. “Oh, why must you go?”

“This is no longer good for either of us,” wrenched from him. “I’ve freed you of something, maybe, but— I’ve marked how I’m become a drawn sword between you and the king.”

“There was never much else between us,” said Yrsa as if her girls were not around her.

“I would only make your sorrows worse, my lady,” said Svipdag. “In the end, through me you could even come into danger of your life.”

She nodded. Bleakness fell upon her. “More likely, I would bring about your downfall. You’re right, here is no longer a place for you. Go, then, and luck and gladness ride at your side.” Her shield broke. “Will I ever see you again?”

“If that is my weird, as truly it is my will, I swear so.”

They spoke only a few words more ere Svipdag left the room. She heard hoofbeats dwindle hollowly away.

V

The brothers went to their parents, where Svipdag spent the next several months getting back his strength and learning how to land his blows one-eyed. He was less blithe than formerly.

Yet he was young, and the world reached before him. Eagerness waxed as his health did. Hvitserk and Beigadh were no less fain to be off. They asked Svip where they might best betake themselves.

“Well, the highest honor, the biggest chance for gold and renown, is with King Hrolf in Denmark and his war
riors,” the yeoman told them. “I’ve heard said for sooth that thither are flocking the best fighters in the Northlands.”

“Where do you think they will seat me?” Svipdag wanted to know.

His father shrugged and said, “That may in some wise depend on you. But I hear of King Hrolf that his like is not to be found. Never does he spare gold and other dear things for whoever will take them of him. He’s skimpy of size, I hear, but great in his thinking and knowledge, a handsome man, haughty toward those who’re not mild, but easygoing and friendly toward small folk and any who don’t set themselves athwart him. A poor man has no more trouble meeting him and getting a fair word than does a wealthy one. At the same time, he’s making his neighbor kings into underlings. Some freely give him their oath, for under him are peace and just laws. Aye, his name will be unforgotten while the world stands.”

Svipdag nodded. He had heard the same at Uppsala. “After what you’ve told,” he said, while his brothers added quick yesses, “I think we should seek King Hrolf, if he’ll take us in.”

“You must see to that yourselves,” answered the yeoman. Sadly: “Me, liefest would I that you stayed home with us.”

They would not hear of this, as he had foreknown. Erelong they bade their father and mother goodbye. Afterward she smote her hands together and said: “She who’s hatched eagles and can’t fly…. Well, we have our daughters and grandchildren.”

Of the faring south is naught to tell. At the Sound the brothers bought ship-passage for themselves and their horses, and from Cheaping-Haven rode across Zealand to Leidhra.

Roskilde had drawn off most of those who once lived there. Hrolf, like Helgi before him, thought it best to keep his brawling guardsmen away from the town. Moreover, Leidhra was the olden seat of the Dane-Kings, founded by Dan himself, hallowed by memories of Skjold the Sheaf-Child. And it was no mere stronghold. The stock
ade ringed big houses as well as the royal hall, lesser dwellings, sheds, bathhouses, barns, stables, mews, kennels, workshops which made clangorous the daylit air. Even so, many who had to do with the king’s household spilled forth in homes strewn across that land of farms and woodlots which rolled richly green from Leidhra to world-edge.

North, south, east, west, four well-kept highroads ran to the gates of the burg. Traffic went thick upon them, wheels, hoofs, feet. Outside the walls were always booths or tents which traders raised, for a few days of dickering before going on elsewhere: a swirl of bright garb, a hubbub of talk and laughter, maybe a roar when two men put on a fight between their stallions. Hearthsmoke made the air bittersweet, above a ripeness of roasting and hay and pitch and dung and sweat and pine planks under a summer sun. Here trundled an oxcart, there clattered a warrior, yonder a smith banged hammer on forge, a carpenter’s saw went
ret-ret
, naked children tumbled amidst yapping dogs in the dust between buildings, a woman drew water from a well which tapped the nearby stream, a maiden fluttered her lashes at the three tall newcomers. “This is less in size than Uppsala,” said Hvitserk.

“Well, yes, seeing as how most of the trade is elsewhere,” said Beigadh. “Here’s a town for chieftains.”

“I was about to finish, it seems greater in heart.”

“And surely in its hall,” said Svipdag, pointing. For last year, the seventh of his reign, Hrolf had built a new one, as grand in every way as had been his uncle’s. Only did he leave off gilt antlers, lest they bring the same bad luck; but cunning carvings swarmed over every gable and beam-end.

“After that gloomy cave where Adhils squats … how bright in here!” said Svipdag as they entered.

The king was on hand, playing a board game against an older man. When the brothers greeted him, he leaned back on the bench, smiled, and asked their names. They told him, and added that Svipdag had been a while with King Adhils.

Hrolf’s brow darkened. He spoke calmly enough:
“Then why did you come here? Between Adhils and me is no close friendship.”

“I know that, lord,” said Svipdag. “Nonetheless I would much like to become your man if it can be done, and my brothers too, though you can see they’re little used to this kind of thing.”

“Wait.” King Hrolf sat straight. “Svipdag … why, yes, I’ve heard of you, if you’re the one—how you three slew Adhils’s berserkers and did other mighty deeds.”

“We are those, lord,” said Svipdag; and less boldly: “Your mother Queen Yrsa was a friend to me.”

Hrolf brightened. He bade them sit down and shouted for drink. They talked long and long. That evening the king had them stand by his high seat, and after the guardsmen had come in, he uttered forth who they were. “I had not thought I would make any who have served King Adhils into comrades of mine,” he said. “But since they’ve sought me I’ll take them in and believe it’ll pay us well, for I see that these are doughty fellows.”

“Where shall we sit?” asked Svipdag a bit stiffly.

Hrolf pointed rightward, where a stretch of bench stood empty before one saw the first of the row of warriors. “By that man who hight Starulf; but leave room for twelve.”

It was a fairly honorable seat. After all, the brothers had yet to prove themselves here. When he sat down, Svipdag asked why a dozen places should stand unused. Starulf told him that those belonged to the king’s berserkers, who were away at war. Svipdag frowned.

Hrolf was unwed, because thus far he saw no house to which he felt sure he wanted to tie himself that firmly. However, by two daughters of yeomen he had girls of his own, Drifa and Skur. They were quite young, though old enough to serve in the hall, both pretty, both taken with the brothers from Svithjodh, and showed these goodwill.