Page 4 of Viking Warriors: Vol. 1-3
She spoke of slavery as easily as we might have remarked upon the fatness of a sow, or the ripening of barley.
“Eirik and I laughed at their strange words. We wanted to learn. It was a game. When we wanted to speak secretly, without our mother knowing what we said, we’d use those other words.”
“So he’s your brother, Eirik?” I asked, “Not your husband?”
“Ha!” She laughed at that, slapping me upon the back so hard that I near fell under the force of it.
“As if I’d marry him! He drives me to madness and back again.”
We moved on in silence for a while, I directing us to avoid where the brambles grow thickest. It was too early for the fruit. Only the thorns were abundant.
When she spoke again, her voice was quieter.
“I was married, but my husband is in Valhalla now. I’ll marry again, when my body and mind desire it.”
She paused in walking, touching my arm. “I’m sorry, for your husband, for his death. I understand some of what you must feel.”
My retort was out of my mouth before I could stop myself. All the resentment I’d felt towards him. “I’m not sorry. I dreaded his bed. He wasn’t a man. He was like vermin in the barn. I’m glad he’s dead.”
I spat the words, spewed them out like so much poison. The sweat prickled on my forehead. I’d kept that hatred inside me for too long.
I looked about nervously, as if expecting the Northmen walking behind us to turn on me in anger. What sort of wife was I, to speak so of my husband?
The first rested his hand upon his axe. Of course, he must have supposed my fury to be directed at Helka.
She shook her head at him, and placed her hand upon my shoulder, as if to soothe me.
“We have many of the qualities of the animals inside us. To be human is to be animal, whatever else it means. Sly as the fox, brave as the eagle or steadfast like the ox, each man has his animal kindred. Ourfylgjaaccompanies us through life: that part of ourselves which is more animal than human.”
It was an idea I’d not entertained before. Our people had long been of the Christian faith, as the monks had taught us. This said we were above the animals, made in God’s image. It was something I’d tried to believe in, but I couldn’t help feeling closer to the animals in the fields and forest and lake, closer to them than to any man I’d met.
“When a baby is born, their animal spirit comes to find them, to accompany them. My mother told me that, on the day of my birth, an owl flew into the room and sat upon the end of the bed. She wouldn’t let anyone shoo it out. It sat for an hour before flying away.”
A strange story, but there was something of the owl in her, it was true. I wondered if there was an owl somewhere in the trees, watching us at that moment.
Helka picked up a stone from the ground, and a leaf.
“Even these have knowledge and life, because the gods are in them. Freya is in the soil and trees, just as Thor is in the thunder. We know that Odin and his brothers first shaped the world, but it’s reshaped every day by us. We all play our part.”
It’s just a rock,I thought,just a leaf. I’m a Christian,I reminded myself,watched over by one God, who made the world, and the sun, the moon and stars, and who sees the blackness of our hearts, alongside the good.And yet, I listened.
“Does the tree perceive the world as I do? I cannot know, but it and I share this world,” said Helka. “Perhaps we cannot know ourselves but by imagining how other beings see us, not just men but the animals, the soil, the sea and mountains.”
Helka told me more as we walked, of how her gods created the world, of how they continue to live in every part of it, from the smallest grain of sand to a drop of water. She told me also of trolls and dwarves, frost-giants and storm-giants, sea-serpents and sorcerers.
My grandmother had entertained me with tales of elves and dragons when I was little, of sacrifices to the old gods, and the old ways, as her grandmother had told them to her. But they were just stories. I know there are no giants in the woods, or any other magical creatures. I don’t believe in magic, or that offering human blood will make the crops grow better. I believe, mostly, only in what my own eyes see.
However, such a teller of stories was Helka that I was almost regretful when we came, at last, to a place where the storm had brought down some oak branches.
As they selected the best in size and girth, to drag back the way we’d come, I stooped to pick a Death’s Cap from where it grew on rotten bark.
No one saw me.
6
The Northmen had an appetite, and not just for food. There was plenty to go round in their eyes: for their stomachs and their cocks. They bid us cook for them and lay a feast in the banqueting hall. The surviving men they placed under watch in the barn, and the old women they sent home to sleep. It was the younger ones they wanted, to serve them ale and ensure a night of carousing.
Several had spent the afternoon carving new oars, telling each other jokes as they worked. It seemed incongruous, that laughter, considering the earlier events of the day. While I’d been in the forest, they’d lit a fire, upon which to pile the corpses. It was summer, so they couldn’t be left, and the Northmen had no time or respect for our burial rituals.
