Odinn's Child (30 page)

Brodir was not fooled. 'I believe you made the same offer to the Earl of Orkney recently,' he rumbled.

Sigtryggr never faltered. 'Oh yes, but Gormlaith changed her mind when I got back to Dublin. She said she would much prefer you as her husband to Sigurd the Stout — though he too is a fine figure of a man — and we agreed that there was no reason for Sigurd to know of the change of plan.'

At that precise moment Sigtryggr noticed that I was within earshot. I was crouched against the side of the vessel, with one of the hounds despondently licking my hand. Belatedly it must have occurred to Sigtryggr that perhaps I was a spy for the Earl of Orkney. 'As a token of my regard,' he went on smoothly, 'I would like to leave you with these two magnificent Irish wolfhounds. They will remind you of the homeland of your future wife. Come now, let us make a bargain on it and seal it with this present.' He reached forward, clasped Brodir's brawny right arm, and they swore an oath of friendship. 'You must come to Dublin with your ships within the month, and try to persuade Ospak to come too.'

Brodir rose to his feet. He was such a colossus that he had to stoop to avoid brushing his black head on the wet tent cloth. As he turned to go, he said to me, 'Come on, you,' and I found myself once more dragging the unfortunate dogs out of the bilges and over the edge of the drakkar. When they refused to jump down into the little boat and paused, whimpering, on the edge of the gap between longship and tender, Brodir, who had already gone ahead, simply reached up and grabbed each dog by the scruff of the neck and hauled them down as if they had been puppies.

I awoke next morning, after an uncomfortable night curled up between the two hounds on the foredeck of Brodir's warship, and looked across to where
Spindrifter
had lain at anchor. The great drakkar had gone. Sigtryggr had decided that his mission was accomplished and had slipped away in the night, setting course for Dublin doubtless to report to his mother that she was now on offer to two ambitious war leaders.

In mid-afternoon Brodir beckoned to me to join him. He was sitting at the foot of the mast, a chunk of wind-dried sheepmeat in one hand and a knife in the other. He cut off slivers of meat and manoeuvred them into his mouth past his luxuriant beard as he cross-examined me. I think he suspected that I was a spy placed by Sigtryggr.

'What's your name and where are you from?' he enquired.

'Thorgils, sir. I was born in Orkney, but I grew up in Greenland and spent time in a place called Vinland.' 'Never heard of it,' he grunted.

'Most recently I've been living in Iceland, in the Westfjords.' 'And who was your master?'

'Well, I was in the service of Snorri Godi at first, but he sent me to live with one of his people, a man called Thrand.'

Brodir stopped eating, his knife blade halfway to his mouth. 'Thrand? What does he look like?'

'A big man, sir. Not as big as yourself. But tall and he's got a reputation as a warrior.'

'What sort of helmet does he wear?'

'An old-fashioned one, bowl-shaped with eye protectors, and there are runes inside which he showed me.'

'Did you know what the runes read?' Bordir asked. 'Yes, sir.'

Brodir had put aside the lamb shoulder and looked at me thoughtfully. 'I know Thrand,' he said quietly. 'We campaigned together in Scotland a few years ago. What else did he tell you about himself?'

'Not much about himself or his past, sir. But he did try to teach me some of the Old Ways.'

'So you're an apprentice of seidr?' Brodir said slowly.

'Well, sort of,' I replied. 'Thrand taught me a little, but I was with him for only a few months, and the rest of my knowledge I have picked up by chance.'

Brodir turned and peered out from under the longship's awning to look at the sky. He was checking the clouds to see if there would be a change in the weather. There was still a thick overcast. He turned back to face me.

'I was once a follower of the White Christ,' he said, 'for almost six years. But it never felt right. I was baptised by one of those wandering priests, yet from that moment on my luck seemed to falter. My eldest son — he must have been a little younger than you — was drowned in a boating accident, and my vikingr brought little reward. The places we raided were either too poor or the inhabitants were expecting us and had fled, taking all their property with them. That was when I met up with Thrand. He was on his way to visit his sister, who was married to a Dublin Ostman, and he joined my war band for a quick raid on one of the Scots settlements. Before we attacked, he made his sacrifices to Thor and cast lots, and he predicted that we would be successful and win a special reward. It was a hotter fight than we had anticipated because we did not know that the King of Scotland's tax collector happened to be staying in the village that night, and he had an escort with him. But we chased them off, and when we dug in the spot of churned earth, we found where they had hastily buried their tax chest containing twenty marks of hack silver. My men and I were delighted, and I noticed how Thrand took care to make an offering of part of the hoard to Thor. Since then I have done the same before and after every battle. I asked Thrand if he would stay on with me as my seidr master, but he said he had to get back home to Iceland. He had given his word.'

'That would be to Snorri Godi, sir,' I said. 'Snorri still consults Thrand for advice before any sort of conflict.'

'And you say that you studied seidr under Thrand?'

'Yes, but just for a few months.'

'Then we'll see if you can be more than a dog boy. Next time I make a sacrifice to Thor, you can assist me.'

Brodir and Ospak held their combined flotilla at Man for another ten days. There was much coming and going between the two men as Brodir tried to persuade Ospak to join him in King Sigtryggr's alliance. The two men were sworn brothers, but Ospak took umbrage at Brodir's grand plan to become Gormlaith's consort and felt that the new scheme had now replaced their own original agreement for a vikingr campaign. Ospak's ambitions were more down to earth than Brodir's. He wanted booty rather than glory, and the more enthusiastically that Brodir spoke about the wealth of King Sigtryggr and his potential as an ally, the more Ospak saw the assets of Dublin as something waiting to be plundered. So he prevaricated, repeatedly pointing out that an alliance with King Sigtryggr was dangerous. The High King Brian, Ospak noted, had the more impressive record as a warrior, and even if King Brian was now getting old, he had four strapping sons, all of whom had shown themselves as capable commanders on the battlefield.

Eventually Brodir became so exasperated with this hesitation that he suggested to Ospak they should take the omens and see which way the forthcoming campaign would turn out. Ospak was also an Old Believer, and he agreed to the idea at once, so a sweat cabin was set up on the beach. I have mentioned that the Norse are as clean a people as circumstances allow. Among their habits is to take baths in hot water, quite a regular occurrence in Iceland, where water already hot emerges from the ground; they also bathe in steam, though this is more complicated. It involves constructing a small and nearly airtight cabin, bringing very hot stones and then dashing fresh water on the stones so that steam fills the chamber. If the process is excessive, more and more steam fills the room until the occupants become giddy from heat and lack of air and sometimes lose their senses. In Iceland Thrand had told me how this could be done to induce a trance-like state and, if one is fortunate, bring on dreams or even spirit flying.

While the steam hut was being prepared on the beach, Brodir set up a small altar of beach stones very like the one I had seen Thorvall construct in Vinland, and asked me to cut invocation runes on several pieces of driftwood. When the heated steam stones were placed inside the steam hut with a bucket of water, Brodir took my rune sticks and, after approving the staves I had cut, added them to the embers. As the last wisps of grey smoke curled up from the little pyre, he removed all his clothes, coiled his hair around his head and squeezed his great bulk into the hut. I covered the doorway with a heavy blanket of cloth, reminded of the similar structure where I had met the Skraeling shaman.

Brodir stayed in the steam cabin for at least an hour. When he emerged he was looking dour and did not say a word, but dressed quickly and ordered his men to row him out to his ship. Seeing his expression, no one on board dared ask him whether he had seen visions and, if so, what they were. The following day he repeated the process with much the same result. If anything, he emerged from the ordeal looking even more solemn than before. Later that evening he called me over and told me that next day it was my turn. 'Thrand would not have wasted his knowledge on someone who has not the sight. Take my place in the steam cabin tomorrow and tell me what you see.'

I could have told him that there was no need. I already knew. On both nights after Brodir had undergone his ordeal in the steamhouse, I had violent dreams. By now I knew enough about my own powers of sight to realise that my own dreams were echoes of his earlier visions. In the first dream I was aboard an anchored ship when there was a roaring noise in my ears and the sky began to rain boiling blood. The crew around me tried to seek shelter from the downpour and many of them were scalded. One man was so badly burned that he died. The dream on the second night was similar except that after the shower of blood the men's weapons leapt from their sheaths and began to fight, one with the other, and again a sailor lost his life. So when the flap dropped down behind me in the steam cabin, and I poured the water on the stones and felt the steam sear my lips and nostrils and burn deep into my lungs, I had only to close my eyes and I was immediately back in my dream. Now the sky, instead of spewing bloody rain, disgorged flight after flight of angry ravens like fluttering black rags. The birds came cawing and swooping, their beaks and claws were made of iron, and they pecked and struck so viciously at us that we were obliged to shelter beneath our shields. And for the third time we lost a sailor. His eyes pecked out and his face a bloody mess, he stumbled blindly to the side of the vessel, tripped on the coaming and, falling into the water, drowned in the spreading pink tendrils of his own blood.

Brodir woke me. Apparently I had been lying in the steam hut for six hours and there had been no sound. He had broken in and found me insensible. Brodir did not question me but waited until I had recovered sufficiently, then sent for Ospak to come to the beach. The three of us withdrew to a quiet spot, out of earshot of the other men, and there Brodir described his visions in the sweat hut. As I suspected, they were almost exactly what I had seen in my own dreams. But only I had the nightmare of the iron-beaked ravens. When Brodir rumbled, 'The lad has the sight. We should listen to him as well,' I described how Odinn's crows had attacked my shipmates and caused such ruin and disaster.

Only a fool would have been blind to the omens and Ospak was no fool. When Brodir asked whether he would be joining with him in King Sigtryggr's alliance, Ospak asked only for time to think things over. 'I need to consult with my shipmasters,' he told Brodir. 'Let us meet again on the beach this evening after dusk, and I will give you my answer.'

When Ospak returned to the beach that evening, there was barely enough light to see by. He was accompanied by all his ship's captains. It was not a good sign. They were all armed and they looked wary. I realised that they were frightened of Brodir, who, besides being very burly, was also known to be quick-tempered. I reassured myself with the thought that there is a prohibition among the Old Believers - not always obeyed - that it is unwise to kill someone after dark because their ghost will come to haunt you. Even before Ospak started speaking, it was obvious what had been decided. 'The dreams are the worst possible omen,' he began. 'Blood from the sky, men dying, weapons fighting among themselves, war ravens flying. There can be no other explanation than that there will be death and war, and that brother will fight brother.' Brodir scowled. Right up to that moment, he had been hoping that Ospak and his men would join him, and that he would be able to keep the combined flotilla together. But Ospak's blunt interpretation of the dreams left no doubt: Ospak and his ships would not only leave the flotilla, but he and his men intended to throw in their lot with the Ostmen fighting for King Brian. With the High King, they thought, lay their best chance of victory and reward.

Brodir did lose his temper, though only for a moment. It was when Ospak referred to the ravens again, almost as an afterthought. 'Perhaps those ravens are the fiends from hell the Christians are always talking about. They are supposed to have a particular appetite for those who have once followed the White Christ and then turned away.' Brodir had been some sort of priest during his Christian phase, I later learned. Stung by this jibe, he took a step forward and moved to draw his sword. But Ospak had stepped quickly back out of blade range, and his captains closed up behind him. 'Steady,' he called, 'remember that no good will come of killing after dark.'

Killing a man after sunset might be forbidden, but departing in the dark is not. That same night Ospak and his captains quiedy unmoored. Their vessels had been anchored in a group, close inshore, and their crews poled them out into the ebb tide so that they silently drifted past us as we slept. Later some of our men said that Ospak had practised some sort of magic so that none of us awoke. In truth several of our sailors did glimpse Ospak's squadron gliding past in the blackness, but they did not have the heart to wake their colleagues. All of us knew that, soon enough, we would meet again in battle.

FOURTEEN