TLV - 01 - The Golden Horn (3 page)

But that same almightiness had brought him to grief, Harald thought. More and more Norsemen came to hate Olaf the Stout. Many turned secretly toward Knut the Great, king of Denmark and England, who also claimed Norway by right of his father Svein Twybeard's victory over Olaf Tryggvason. In the end, chiefs and yeomen alike rose in revolt; the Danes arrived to help; Olaf the Stout was forced to flee to refuge with Grand Prince Jaroslav in Russia.

But now, after a year and a half, when Knut's Danish jarl had drowned at sea, Olaf had returned home. With what folk he could gather, Russian, Swedish, Norse, he was seeking his kingship again.

Harald's downy face lifted and stiffened. That those traitors, those swine would dare stand against Olaf! Their king!

But in truth Olaf had changed in Russia, changed so much that his jest about Hrut was astonishing. The man who once mowed down stubborn yeomen like wheat had lately given money to buy Masses for the souls of those enemies who would fall; he had forbidden looting and burning; he had tried to keep his army to the road so that crops would not be trampled; he spoke gently to every man; sometimes he had visions.

Harald crossed himself. He lacked his kinsman's devoutness, but the regrowth of heathendom which he had seen during Olaf's exile had angered him—that men should do what their rightful lord had banned.

They had not far to go this day. Olaf was merely looking for a good site to defend. On a high hill above a farm near Stiklastadh, the horns blew a halt.

Rognvald and Harald staked out their horses, for men fought afoot in the North, and helped each other don mail. Underpadding, nose-guarded helmet, rattling knee-length ring byrnie, small wooden shield with its single handgrip, sword sheathed at hip, all sent a thrilling like wine through the boy. Afterward he watched men straggle into place behind the banners of their chieftains. Rognvald squinted at the horizon.

"Dag's band is not yet in sight," he said. It had gone another way. "Best we ask the king what to do." He pushed through the crowd. Harald trailed him.

Olaf was talking with a stocky, grizzled yeoman, but turned as Rognvald neared.

"Good day to you," he greeted. "What is the matter?" When the Orkneyman had explained, Olaf decided: "Then the Uplanders had best take the right wing. Set up your standard to rally them there."

His glance fell on Harald, and he stroked his beard and stared until his half-brother grew uneasy. Despite his youth, Harald was already as tall as most men, wide-shouldered and narrow-waisted, hands and feet
big but well formed. Thick fair hair tumbled past a lean face with long straight nose, jutting chin, thin lips. Above the large light eyes, the brows were dark, the left one higher than the right, which gave him a look of always studying the world and pondering how to overthrow it. His outfit was good, bedecked with gold, as befitted his birth, though travel-stained like everybody else's.

"I think best you stay out of the battle, kinsman," Olaf said. "You're still no more than a child."

Harald felt himself go hot. It angered him that his voice should break as he answered: "No! I'll be there. Should I be too weak to master my sword, you can bind it to my hand, and then see I've no more ruth for these farmers than you. But—but—I'll fight with my folk!"

He gulped for breath and hastily sought a way to nail down his words. It was mannerly to make a verse at great times, and the men on Aasta's stead had taught him skaldcraft as well as the use of arms. He blurted one that he had composed not long ago:

"Aught shall no woman ever

eye, than that I bravely

guard my place and greedy

glaive besmear with redness.

The young deed-worthy warrior

will not blench at spearshafts

flying when the folk

foregather at blood-meeting."

Olaf sighed. "Stay, then," he said in a troubled tone. "It's God's will whether you live or die."

He turned back to the yeoman, who owned the nearby farm, and went on: "Thorgils, I would liefer you kept out of the fight and promised me instead to care for the wounded and give the fallen a grave. And if I should die, give my body the care it needs, if they don't forbid that."

The man nodded mutely, pressed his hands between the king's and hurried off, stumbling a little.

Harald went to his post with Rognvald, wondering if he had made a fool of himself. But he was soon forgotten anyhow, for Olaf rose to address his men. He stood on a rock so everyone could see him, in chain mail and gilt helmet, one hand bearing a spear and the other a white shield with a golden cross, sword belted at his thick waist. His words rolled forth with a seaman's fullness:

"We have a big and good host, and, even if the yeomen have somewhat more men, it was ever a matter of luck which side wins. And know this: I shall not flee from this battle; for me, it will be victory or death, and I ask that the upshot be what God deems best. Let us take comfort in knowing that our cause is the better one.
..."

His banner fluttered in a passing breeze, over his head of sunlit gold. The men cheered. When he urged them to go forward as strongly as they could at the outset and put the enemy's leading ranks to flight, so that one would trip over another and the more there were the worse it would be for them, Harald thought wildly that this lord could storm Hell gate.

Still the foe did not show himself. After Olaf finished, his army sat down in the long grass to wait. Harald's gaze ranged about. Behind him lay the clustered buildings of the farm, log walls and turf roofs. Cattle cropped in the meadow with a calm that seemed outrageous. Beyond them gleamed a river. Elsewhere he saw hills, fields that rippled green under the wind, the dark bulk of a forest. When he stood up, he saw a few more men come to talk with the king. But presently they left him alone. Olaf fell asleep with his head in Finn Arnason's lap. Stout Finn Arnason, of a family mighty in Norway, had stood by the king though his own brother Kalf was high in the rebel host. Harald thought this must be a bitter day for him.

The youth tried to talk with Rognvald, who lay at his ease chewing a grass stem, but chatter soon faded. Would they sit here forever?

When at last a shout lifted, Harald jumped, as if stricken with an arrow. The foe were coming in sight.

They trooped over a hill, endlessly, spears and spears and spears. The dogged tramping of thousands of feet reached Harald across miles. There they came, he thought in the leaping of his heart, there they came under the banners of their chiefs: plain bearded men in gray wadmal, farmers, fishermen, wrights, carles.

common folk who did not like being taxed and fined and herded into a church they hardly understood. Wave after wave of them poured sullenly down into the valley; it was as if the earth rose in anger to cast off its kings.

Rognvald whistled. "A hundred times a hundred—at least," he said. "There'll be fat ravens tomorrow."

Finn Arnason shook Olaf, who blinked and said low, "Why did you wake me? Why did you not let me enjoy my dream?"

"You were hardly dreaming so well that you had not better make ready," said Finn. "Don't you see the whole yeoman host is on its feet now?"

Olaf looked down the slope. "They're not yet so near that it were better you called me instead of letting me dream."

"What was your dream, then?" growled Finn.

"I thought I saw a high ladder, and I went so far up it that Heaven was open before me."

Finn made to cross himself, but out of old habit it was Thor's hammer he drew. "I don't think that dream was as good as you believe," he said. "I think it means you're a fey man, if it wasn't merely dream mists which came over you."

2

Still the fight stalled. The yeomen needed time to pull their ranks together, while their leaders harangued them, and Olaf was waiting for Dag. They saw the prince at last, miles away in a smoke of dust, but he could not arrive for a while. Harald's tongue felt thick and dry, as if he were going to be ill.

"Forward, forward, yeomen!" The shouts hung on the air, which had grown very still. Slowly the foe slogged up the hillside. Behind the ranks, archers and slingers made ready.

They were only some yards off when they halted again. Harald could see their faces, their arms, a scar that twisted one mouth and a scarlet cloak that must be the best garment of another. Beyond their first line he was aware only of their manyness.

A small group stepped from the van to talk with Olaf. Rognvald pointed them out to Harald. "That's Kalf Arnason, and that's Thorgeir from Kvistadh, and that's Thorstein the Shipwright; he hates Olaf because the king once took his best ship as a fine. I don't yet see Thori Hound—no, there he is, moving toward the front under that green banner."

For Harald, to whom these men had been names and deeds only, the flesh was strange. He could not shake off the notion that they were somehow more than men, just as Olaf was, and that more would be fought out today than who should steer Norway.

Sharp-edged words drifted to him from the brothers Kalf and Finn. Olaf said something about making peace even at this late hour, but the chiefs went back to their host. And now Thori Hound and his men took their place in the lead, and Rognvald laid a hand on Harald's shoulder. "Hold your shield up slantwise," he reminded. "They will be shooting."

"Forward, forward, yeomen!"

Olaf's host roared back the rallying cry he had given them:
"Forward, forward, Christ men, cross men, king's men!"

Harald heard the dark whistle of arrows rising behind him. He saw another flight meet it in the sky and pounce on him. Something hit his shield, he felt a rock bounce back, an arrow smote his shield rim and stuck, a spear glittered past. He knew with immense astonishment that he was now truly in a battle. It was like understanding, two years ago, that he had bedded his first thrall girl.

"Go!" shouted Rognvald. The Upland standard bearer set off at a run.

"Forward, forward, Christ men, cross men, king's men!"

As he plunged down the slope, Harald had a glimpse across the enemy host below. Somehow, those on the edges had taken up Olaf's cry, and their fellows were blindly attacking them. Laughter rattled in his throat.

A man ahead of him groaned and fell to his knees. An arrow stood in his eye. He pawed at it, rolled over, and Harald slipped in the blood that ran from his brain. The boy was hardly aware of picking himself up and following Rognvald.

Suddenly the enemy front was before him. He saw a face over a shield. Every part was stark in his mind: thick yellow brows, big nose, coarse pores. His sword whooped and hit the shield edge.

The yeoman grunted and smote with a light one-handed ax. Harald caught the blow on his own shield and lurched with the shock. He cut low, striking at the fellow's legs, and saw the calf flayed open. The yeoman howled and staggered back. Harald pressed in, hewing. Teeth grinned at him, another man was there. Where had the first one gone? Something clipped his helmet and he stumbled. Echoes flew in his head. He struck out wildly, catching an ax haft on his blade. The hilt was almost torn from his hands. Then still a third man shoved in before him. They traded blows. He saw rust on the other's sword.

Was this battle, he thought dimly—this trampling and slipping and hammering, in a mill of stinking bodies? Why
...
did you even know, at the end, whether you had killed anyone or not?

"Follow the banner,
"old Hrafn had said.
¹
'Always follow the banner, or you won't know where you're at." He had been Aasta's blacksmith till age and rheumatism made him too feeble. Folk whispered that he still made heathen sacrifices in secret, and indeed he had asked anxiously if they would bind hell shoes on his feet when he was dead, for the long journey hence. Once, though, Hrafn had been a great viking, and he taught Harald much weaponcraft and lore about far places. Now he lay in the earth. Harald remembered fleetingly that no one had put hell shoes on him.

Looking up when he had a chance, the youth saw Rognvald's standard pitching above a swarm of helmets, and forced a way thither. Arrows, spears, stones sleeted from above. He saw a bruise on his left arm, where the shirt was torn below the byrnie, and wondered how it had gotten there.

Rognvald Brusason spied him and yelled: "We're driving them back! We're driving them back, do you hear?"

A dull lowing of horns lifted from the sides. The yeomen had flanked the king's host and were coming in on three fronts. Their foremost warriors chopped with ax and sword, those behind thrust with spears, and further back the archers and slingers fired without stop. Harald saw a man fall with whom he had been dicing and bragging only yesterday. Feet st
amped the body into the ground.

Forward! He struck and struck, taking blows on his shield till it splintered as if mice had been gnawing it. A man was before him, he hacked, his sword bit deep into the red neck and the man went down. But there was no time to be gladdened by this first kill of his life. Sweat stung his eyes, drenched his clothes. Overhead, Rognvald's banner swayed and flapped. The clang of iron, yells and curses of men, his own heartbeat and harsh panting, filled Harald's skull. He hardly marked the jag of pain that went through him. He was still pressing forward.

All at once he grew aware that he had won close to Olaf. The king's folk were falling, their ranks thinned and pushed against each other. Through a brief gap in the struggle, Harald saw Olaf's sword blaze down, cleaving a man's nose guard and laying his face open so that it almost fell off. The king's standard bearer thrust his staff into the ground and toppled bloodily. Two skalds were dead; Thormodh of Iceland still fought. Then there were foemen again between Harald and Olaf.