Daughter of the Wind (8 page)

These coastal ruffians were notorious, but despite their ill fame they did succeed sometimes, according to rumor, in snaring a few disabled or novice boatmen. They operated general purpose ships, neither sleek enough to be warships nor stout-timbered enough to carry ore. Vagabonds were mistrusted, and outlaws were condemned to the most brutal fate, but the yearly law court had little power to enforce its will among men who dwelt on outlying islands.

Despite the evidently drunken condition of the man bellowing yet another question—“
Did you eat him for breakfast?
”—the man at the steering oar was holding an increasingly steady course, and three of the crew were making the unmistakable motions of men buckling on sword belts. Another made a thrusting gesture with a spear, warming up the muscles of his throwing arm. Gauk sailed away from the approaching ship.

Strider
was fast, but as she sailed at an angle to the wind the boat began to take on water. The sharp spray slashed Gauk's face, and brine began to break over the sides of the craft. No one from Spjothof minded wet, and even the most seaworthy vessel took on water. Every villager knew how to bail, using the wooden water scoops with an expert hand.

But this extra load of water slowed
Strider
, and made her clumsy. The iron-voiced pirate was calling out that there was no fleeing, they had seen the bear fur rolled up in the prow. “Come about and let us feed you to the fish,” he was saying with a laugh.

Gauk was determined to avoid trouble, and for a long time
Strider
stayed just ahead of the heavy ship. Many ruffians preferred sea fighting to land battle, so the ocean offered only a bleak refuge from experienced warriors, but the distant horizon was clear and cloudless. The pirate vessel had evidently been beached on many rocky shores—its prow was well scarred, and the ship cut through the swells with a stolid crash.

Snorri would have had little trouble eluding such a well-worn ship. Gauk, however, could not tease such speed from the vessel. More than once the ship's shadow fell over
Strider
. The armed men taunted Gauk with mock-encouragement. As
Strider
cut across the pirate vessel's path, working hard for the open ocean, the ship kept the pace, never slipping far behind. The armed men were growing uglier in mood as the chase wore on, the distant shore shrinking.

And the ship's helmsman knew how to travel the sea road, anticipating what moves
Strider
would make, cutting off the smaller vessel, and cutting her off again, until the sound of water rushing around the big vessel's prow was loud beside Gauk and spit flew down upon him from the cursing men leaning over the ship's side.

On Odin's shoulders sit two ravens,
Huginn
—Thought—and
Mummin
—Memory. From his high seat among the gods, the wisdom-loving Odin sees everything that happens. Gauk realized the fruitlessness of his flight, both from the pirates and from the god himself. Perhaps the outlaw ship was simply doing the violent god's bidding, testing Gauk's new gifts.

A spear, hurled from above, shivered in the small boat's planking. Another followed, just missing Gauk, and vanishing in the water. One of the pirates seized a long pole with a hook-and-bill of bronze, the sort of implement for securing floating objects from the waves.

The point of this gleaming tool was thrust at Gauk, and thrust again as the young man worked the small boat just out of range.

Gauk was growing angry now—at these guffawing, coarse seamen, at the gods, angry even at the vessel for not being more swift.

Gauk knew, from the poems he had heard since boyhood, that it would be in character for Odin to take on the appearance of an entire crew of furious, cruel men in order to make a game of trying out a new initiate's powers. Odin had long ago fashioned the world from the blood and bones of a giant named Ymir, and the god had surrendered an eye as the price for drinking from the fountain of wisdom. Odin was the most knowledgeable of all the deities, but he was also the one most in love with bloodshed.

This is where the god will give me strength, Gauk reminded himself. When I put on the bear belt and ask for Odin's strength, it will come.

Gauk shortened
Strider
's sail. The vessel slowed, veering, and the ship bulked past, unable to slow down quickly enough. The pirates called out rude advice to their helmsman, and as the vessel came slowly about, Gauk stepped to the prow and picked up a black-stained packet of bear fur.

Gauk shook out a long, blood-grimed length of raw bear pelt. He had long dreamed of such a moment, but now that it was here he felt unsteady. He flung the length of ripe fur over his shoulder, fastening it with a bronze cloak clasp. Despite the chill in the air, the bear skin smelled of death.

Fourteen

Once more, the shadow of the sea-battered ship fell over
Strider
.

The spearman in the prow called to the helmsman, words impossible to make out as the larger vessel's sail luffed and flapped in the wind. This was a rank, untidy ship, with a knotted length of
festr
—mooring rope—dangling from the side.

Gauk had heard the old poems, how a berserker actually feels the bear-spirit enter his body, changing his essence. To the bystanders—and to a startled enemy—an Odin initiate was a frightening sight. Gauk had heard this lore, but never quite believed it, even when Errik told one of his best poems, of ancient battle, an Odin initiate taking on an entire fifteen-bench warship, killing every warrior.

As the spearman made a halfhearted, lunging jab with the bronze-tipped weapon, a sound filled the sunny air like the panting growls of a she-bear when she defends her young. The fighting creature from
Strider
climbed over the side of the ship, and the spearman cried out for help.

The bear-man thrust once, and his spear sank deep into the spearman's breast. The berserker wrenched the spear free, and killed a swordsman with a thrust to the throat. A sword cut the air, missing badly, and the bear-creature's roar paralyzed this new attacker before he could ready another blow.

The creature who had been Gauk drew a hunting blade, slashed, and the swordsman fell to the deck, gagging on his own blood-rich howls. The helmsman leaped from the vessel, followed by his two remaining companions, but not before the bear-like beast slashed one of the fleeing men across the throat.

The two remaining dived into the sea.

No man could stay in the water long and live.

The cold already blanched the two still struggling on the surface, coughing, instantly too cold to beg for their lives. The bear-creature looked down at them from the ship, surprised at the shape of his own shadow on the water, a human being.

Fifteen

“Your father is unhurt.”

Thrand offered Hallgerd this reassurance as the salt wind hummed. She wished she could trust his word, but said nothing. Silence, she believed, was her sole defense.

“The Spjotmen fought with spirit, but none of them was killed,” he continued, gazing out over the rise and fall of the sea.

They spoke during the second sunset of their voyage, a flock of heavy-beaked puffins fanning out ahead of the ship.

“How can I believe you?” said Hallgerd.

The gray-eyed man considered, and asked, with a gentle laugh, “Are Danes famous as liars in your village?”

She did not respond. Danes were held in no high regard, but it would be bad manners to say so.

“I swear by Odin's high-throne,” said Thrand, “that the only harm your village suffered, aside from a charred alehouse, was the loss of a wedding prize, Hallgerd—you.”

She believed him. Every color in the air took on a richer hue, and the very flavor of the wind became more sweet.

This was the first confirmation Hallgerd heard that she was an intended bride. She knew there was a cruel honor in being such a valuable prize, and there was an implied promise that she would suffer no further physical harm. Of course, no woman from her village would ever accept such a marriage. She knew that her duty was to behave herself in a way that would reflect the dignity of Spjothof, and to buy time for the ships that would, eventually, avenge her capture.

“What war chief dares,” she asked, “to think his bed can comfort me?”

She imagined Lidsmod arriving to do battle with a rich Dane, a fisherman with a fleet or a timber merchant grown wealthy. Certainly the man who sent an army to steal her away must be a landowner with chests full of silver heirlooms. Even the warriors he had employed had the robust, well-fed look of men who did not have to boil their own mutton.

But Thrand merely laughed, the soft, kindly chuckle her father used when he sought to end a conversation.

And he brought her a blanket of kid-wool and tucked it around her, his touch as gentle as his gaze.

Hallgerd looked skyward when all but the helm and the night-watch were asleep. Thor was the god most like a human being in his aspirations and pleasures. He loved to test his strength, rolling boulders and hurling his weapon, just like mortal men. He loved the smell of fertile fields after a long rain, and was saddened at a widow's tears.

Guide me to freedom
, she prayed.
Give me the power to escape, and Lidsmod and I will name a son and a daughter after you
.

Hallgerd knew that if she fled now, trying to swim to the nearby rocky shore, she would lose her live in the profound cold of the water. And she would not be alive to witness the sea warriors of Spjothof when they wet their swords in the blood of these Danes. She longed for Lidsmod with his affectionate, thoughtful eyes, and his ready laugh. She wanted to breathe into his ear, even now, that she was well in body and spirit, and faithful to him.

Perhaps she would ask Lidsmod to spare Thrand. Certainly she would. In fact, these Danes were an oddly likable crew, despite their warlike nature. None of them was as quarrelsome as Spjothof's Gorm, or as tirelessly boastful as Opir, who did try Hallgerd's patience at times.

But the Danish laughter was softer than the hearty guffaws of her village, and their songs tuneful and touched with an almost unmanly sadness, the sort of songs Spjothof widows sang, or lonely wives. A tough lead oarsman from Spjothof would never have sung the lilting poem that was the favorite of one scarred Danish seaman.

A sailor fell in love with an Arctic fox, in this chant, a creature who was a human female only during the months of summer. “
Come back to me, silver-whisper,
” sang the Danish warrior.

“Sing it again, Sverri,” his shipmates would exclaim.

Morning, Thrand offered her a cup of mead.

The colorfully decorated ship that carried Hallgerd and her captors was called
Visunder
—Bison. Thrand was more than happy to point out the refinements of the craft, a thirty-four bencher, by far the longest Hallgerd had ever encountered.

Gilt paint scrollwork decorated a sea chest used by Thrand, and each of the other seamen had arm-rings or silver buckles kept carefully polished against the sea air. An eye on each side of the prow gave this ship some passing resemblance to a beast.

“She looks like a living creature,” said rough Olaf, “doesn't she, Jarl's Daughter?”

Olaf was so openly proud of the vessel, and so boyishly in need of hearing it praised, that Hallgerd had to suppress a smile.

“In my village,” she said, “any boy and girl can carve a bison out of whalebone.”

But the half-resentful, half-pained look in Olaf's eye made her relent.

“She is a noble ship, it's true,” she agreed, the way her mother would have, to spare even an enemy's feelings.

Indeed, the vessel's interior was drier and more comfortable than any seagoing craft Hallgerd had ever sailed before. Braziers of smoking coals warmed her hands and feet each morning, and Thrand offered her cups of fruit wine, a drink Hallgerd had heard of but never tasted in her life.

“Made of grapes,” said Thrand, noting her expression of surprise.

She knew of berries, gathered wild during the summer. She had heard of vineyards in distant lands, but had never tasted their fermented juice. “I don't like the flavor.”

Olaf gave his familiar grin, gazing down over Thrand's shoulder. “You'll get used to it,” said the scarred seaman, “when you sit at your fine table.”

Hallgerd gave what she trusted was a smile her father would approve.

Never
, she thought.

Never, if it costs me my life
.

Sixteen

When it was time for the evening meal, the sun-weathered sailing men opened wooden chests and brought out platters of loaf bread and slathered it with butter.

Butter was so rare in Hallgerd's experience that some farmers hoarded it like gold and paid off debts with small tubs of the stuff. Eating such treasure struck Hallgerd as an extravagant, reckless luxury, but the oarsmen around her bit into grand slices of bread and butter, laughing and enjoying one another's company. They placed bets on how long a seal would stay submerged alongside the ship, or which seabird would cross
Bison
's wake first, just like the men of Spjothof, despite their Danish accents and unthinkingly rich diets.

Thrand gave her a linen cloth to dab the droplets of grape wine from her lips, and offered her cheese smeared with butter, smiling good-naturedly, and making no further threats. The soft-spoken man was the one who blew upon the hardwood coals until they glowed at dawn, and fastened a whale-skin over her shoulders in the gentle mist that fell one afternoon.

“You won't be cutting off my nose, Olaf?” asked Hallgerd as
Bison
's sail was full bellied, the beautiful ship well ahead of the others.

“I would never have done such a thing,” Olaf replied.

When she made no further remark, Olaf's smile become less certain. “It was a make-believe threat, Jarl's Daughter—nothing more than that.”

Aside from Olaf, who turned out to be as much a hardworking manservant as captor, and Thrand, who finally poured a cup of Frankish wine so sweet, Hallgerd had to agree that it was delicious, most of the oarsmen ignored her. If the broad-shouldered helmsman met her gaze he would dip his head with a polite smile and then make every effort to find some point on the horizon to study.