A sample from an early work, based on a medieval Icelandic saga.
© 1975 by asotir. All rights reserved.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License
Swan-Maiden: Five
THE NIGHT WORE on, still and peaceful in the fire-warm hall. Only seldom would the moan of the wet wind without rise so that it might be heard. The lamps now were all snuffed, and the long hall dark. The ember-pit, four ells wide, fifty long, cast up a darkly-reddish glow upon the stones and the benches filled with sleeping men. At the middle the glow cast up like a sea-wave upon the roof-trees. Only the bottoms of them were in that glow: half-way up their lengths they were lost in the darkness. Between them was the highseat of Hardbein Oxen-Hand: a thing of red and black, carven and big and shadowy.
There sat Olaf, unmoving as stone, seeming larger for the blackness of his smoky shadow grown up behind him. Before him could be seen his shoes and leggings, all crusted over with the mud of that night’s ride: then a blackness, and above that his chest and heavy shoulders, arms and hands, beard and face. In the light his face seemed old, older far than Olaf was. But his great dark eyes cast back none of the ruddy gleamings of the fire below.
At his feet his daughter sat. One arm she had put about her father’s lower legs, and her cheek leaned against the mud-splashed thigh. With the other hand, unrestfully, she stroked and played with the thick black braid curling down around the wanness of her throat.
In his hand Olaf held the ale-horn: but it might have been Mjollnir for all he lifted it. The other hand sat thick as a bear’s paw upon his knee. In the wild tangle of his beard were spots of black: and they were clots of mud, thickening among the crinkled hairs. Sleepily Olaf looked down upon the black crown of his daughter’s hair.
She, as if stirred by that gaze, sat up and set to unbinding the muddy shoes. Those laces had been drawn tight by a man’s strength, and even tighter by mud and fire. She was a long time about it, even with her slender clever fingers.
‘I mind me of that first time you unbound my shoes,’ Olaf murmured. ‘Little were you then; and the knots looked bigger than your fists. How I laughed to see that you could undo them all!’
‘Yes,’ said the girl softly. ‘That was when my mother lived. I had to fight that I might unbind your shoes. Then there were many that wished for that honor.’
With a wrench Olaf lifted up the mead-cup and brought it to his lips. He moved his head, and the shadow grown behind him moved a bit, unclosing more of the carved runes of the seat. Olaf sighed, and shut fast his eyes: took a grip on his daughter’s hair. Slowly he let it slip between his rough horned fingers.
‘So, Swanhild, I have done it. Was it so wrong?’
The girl at his feet did not look up. The last knot pulled free, and she tugged off the shoe: knocked it against stone and set it over beside the other.
‘You are a good godi, father,’ she told the ember. ‘It is not for me to gainsay you. You know more of the world than I. I will not grumble.’
She bent and picked up a shoe again, and set it beside her own stockinged foot. ‘When I was a child, and my mother yet lived, then these shoes seemed great to me. The mud on them smelled oddly, of faroff fields. Sometimes there were flowers caught in the lacings: then I knew you had been up in the fells. Sometimes thorns pricked my fingers, and I tried hard not to let you see my tears. But you ever knew.’
‘What,’ he muttered, ‘you do not weep now? But no, you are too proud for that. You are too like your mother, little black swan: long-necked and graceful, but fierce withal. Shy to hand, to fight deadly. You are over-bloodthirsty, Swan: it was your name made you so. Swans are better seen from afar. If you had been born a hundred years ago, then you would have been a great lady like in the tales. Then you would have wed a mighty man, served mead and ale to all his battle-comrades; given birth to sons, decked yourself in gold, and seen wolves glutted on crimson fields...’
‘Yes, you mock me now,’ she said; ‘but earlier it seemed to me you let them argue it out as if you hoped they might shout down these plans of yours, and make you be again that Olaf you once were, in spite of you.’
‘And where then would have been that Olaf I once was?’ he asked, with a weary blitheness.
She was still. Then, very quietly, ‘Father, must it be this way?’
He took her hair and pulled round her head, firmly, gently, so that she must look up at him. ‘Daughter,’ he said to her; then halted. She pulled free her head and sat round with her back against the fire, and her arms curled round her knees. Olaf looked down at her, and saw the red light glinting through the backs of her eyes, so that in the shadow of her face two red slits blazed.
‘Daughter, there was a time when I should never have chosen this path: well you know it. When a man is young, he burns with Odin’s three fires. Poetry, mead, battle... Njal Thoroldsson asked me to give you to him as wife.’
Those red slits grew long. ‘What answer gave you?’
‘I said, that it would be called a good match by many: that his kin are fully the equal of ours, and that Njal himself is known to be a man clever at law and gaining wealth. I said that none would call it aught but gain to both our standings; but that I had vowed you a free hand in it, and must ask you your rede on it.’
‘Why did you not give it to him then, in place of all those words?’
‘Swan, he is a young man yet, and only now feels the highseat of his father. I would not hurt his pride.’
‘But father, weasels have no pride.’
Olaf was still for a moment: then burst out in a laugh, lusty and young. Men turned about and raised their arms where they lay sleeping down the hall. ‘Ah, Swan, thanks... It is long since I have laughed so. How far away seem the days of my youth now! They are laid in howe; and my middle days are far from well. Old Jarl Haakon is dead, and Norway’s King owns Christ for his lord. And I look only for peace in my oldness. What else would you have me do? Let Njal Long-Nose have his way. What care I for temples and wooden gods? We are not changed for that. The goats will still give milk, the winds will blow, and Vatnajokull will flood these dales. Enough, then: I have chosen. Now is that hay cut and stacked.’
The black-haired girl leaned on one arm, her hand flat upon the stones, and looked about the hall. That glow was darkling, and the forms of sleeping men fainter, bigger and more awesome. Half to herself she muttered, ‘I mind me of the tale of how the might of the Ynglings was ended in the Swede-realm. Ingjald the Ill-minded was then king at Uppsala, and his daughter Asa Ill-rede by his side: and twelve kings they slew by treachery and strength, and broadened their realm two-fold in every way. And King Ingjald wived his daughter to Gudrod, king over Skaney; but she set Gudrod to slay his brother, and then brought on Gudrod’s death – so she returned to Uppsala and her father. But then Ivor the Far-reaching, Gudrod’s brother’s son, went into Skaney, and with Odin’s aid raised a host and marched on Uppsala. And all King Ingjald’s men fled. Thereat the king went back into his hall with all his folk; and Asa served all men strong ale, but Ingjald let faggots be laid about the hall. And when the folk were all dead drunk, then the king rose up and laid fire to the hall: he took the highseat, and Asa sat in the guest-seat, and all there were burnt up: and men said that was the costliest funeral-bier...’
To that Olaf had no quick answer. After awhile he spoke lowly and said, ‘That was long ago, daughter: years and years before King Harald Hairfair’s first breath. Do not grieve that those nights are gone.’
‘You have said it, father: this thing is done. But still, in the patterns of these embers, I can see the lines of days to come: things beyond your seeing. And I must say it now for I have no choice: you shall have what you wish, but you will outlive me by many winters; and I will die young.’
