“Belay that yammer, you cur,” Bjarki snapped. He
peeled the clutching fingers loose from his ring-mail and pitched his burden into the bog. Hott crashed through the ice and huddled down to hide under the water and mud beneath.
The Norseman unslung his shield and went to meet the monster.
It saw him, swung on high and readied itself to stoop: a featherless thing of huge sickling wings, cruel claws and beak, tail like a lashing rudder, scaly crest above snaky eyes. Bjarki planted his feet and laid hand on sword hilt.
His weapon would not leave the sheath.
“Witchcraft!” he groaned. The monster hissed athwart the bleak-bright Bridge. Wings thrust air, and down it came.
“Elven sword—” Bjarki hauled on Lövi till the sheath creaked. Then it broke loose to flash under the stars.
The troll-being was almost upon him. A rank smell overwhelmed his lungs. He held his shield firm and struck from behind it. The heavy body smote, a thud and clang, a boom of air and a whistle out of grinning sharp-toothed jaws. Bjarki stumbled back. Any other man would have been flattened, broken-boned. His blade had already bitten. In it went between wing and leg, through hide and flesh and ribs to the heart.
The monster swerved and crashed. A while it threshed around. The earth quivered under the blows of its wings. When most of its cold blood had run out onto the rime, it lay dead.
Bjarki gusted a breath and went after Hott.
He must pluck the fear-blinded, shaking, whimpering wretch out of the bog, carry him over to where the beast lay still twitching, and set him down. Pointing to the wound, from which blood welled black, he said: “Drink of that.”
“No, oh, no, I beg you,” Hott blubbered.
“Drink, I said! Have I not told you what my brother Elk-Frodhi did for me? Whoever called this thing forth, out of whatever hell, wanted strength in it.”
Hott crawled and sobbed. Bjarki clouted him and
promised worse if he did not obey. The boy shut his eyes and put his mouth to that cup which the sword had made. However much he gagged, Bjarki made him swallow two long draughts. Thereupon the Norseman cut the heart out of the beast, handed it over, and said, “Take a bite off this.”
Hott did. He had stopped shaking. When he had chewed the meat, he bounded up. “Why—” He looked around in wonder. “Why, the world is beautiful.”
“You feel better, eh?” said Bjarki as he settled the elven blade back in its birchbark sheath.
“I feel … as if I’d wakened from death.”
Bjarki felt Hott’s arms. “I knew there were good thews in you, since I got you rightly fed,” he grunted. “What you needed was to tauten them.” He unbuckled his sword belt. “Let’s try you out.”
Long they wrestled before Bjarki got Hott to one knee, longer than he would have taken even for Svipdag. Raising the other, he panted gladly: “You’ve a bit of strength now. I don’t think you need fear the guardsmen of King Hrolf any more.”
Hott lifted hands to heaven and cried in young heat, “From this night, I’ll never fear them—or you either, or anyone or anything!”
“That’s well, Hott, my friend,” said Bjarki. “I think I’ve paid off a debt of mine.” He grinned. He was no oldster himself. “Help me set up this carcass so they’ll think it’s alive.”
Laughing like drunkards, they did. Thereafter they stole back to the hall, lay down, and acted as if nothing had happened.
In the morning the king asked whether aught had been marked of the fiend, whether it had shown itself during the night. He got the answer that livestock around the burg seemed unharmed. “Look further,” he ordered.
The watchmen did. Erelong they came pounding back, to gasp that they had seen the beast and it was bound hither.
Men clattered to arms. The king bade them be brave and each do his best to get the life out of this thing. He
took the lead in the dash to meet it. When they spied the great brown shape, propped on stiffened wings in the wintry dawn, they drew together in a shield-ring, and a hush fell over them.
After a while the king said slowly, “I don’t think it’s even moving. Who’ll take a reward to go and see what it’s about?”
Bjarki spoke aloud: “It’d indeed be something for a bold man to carry that out before witnesses.” He clapped the back of the youth who had followed him. “Hott, my fellow!” he said. “Here’s where you can wash off that slander they’ve put on you, that you’ve neither strength nor courage. Go slay yonder pest! You can see that none of the others are minded to.”
Stares went to the fair-locked head which suddenly was borne so high. “Yes,” said Hott, “I will.”
The king lifted his brows. “I see not where you’ve gotten this boldness from, Hott,” he said. “You must have changed in a very short while.”
“I have no weapon of my own,” was the answer. Pointing to one of the two swords which King Hrolf wore: “Give me that Goldhilt of yours, and I’ll fell the beast or get my bane.”
Hrolf looked at him for a time before he said, “It’s not seemly that this sword be borne by any save a brave and trustworthy lad.”
“You’ll soon see that I am like that.”
“Who knows if there’s not been even more of a change in you than we thought we saw? It’s as if you were altogether a different being…. Well, take the sword, then, and if you can do this deed, I’ll find you worthy to own it afterward.”
Few had followed these words. They were too aware of the hideousness before them. But all saw Hott bare the steel and run toward it. In a single blow, he knocked it flat.
“Look, lord,” cried Bjarki, “what a mighty work he’s done!”
Stunned at first, the men broke into cheers, brandished their weapons, clanged blade on shield, rushed to hug
Hott and lift him on their shoulders. Hrolf stayed behind, as did Bjarki. The king said low: “Yes, he has become something else from what he was. Nevertheless, Hott alone has not slain the beast. Rather, you did.”
The Norseman shrugged. “Could be that’s so.”
Hrolf nodded. “This I saw at once when you came here: that few could be like unto you. Yet I think your best work is that you’ve made a man out of this hitherto luckless Hott.”
The troop were nearing. Hrolf raised his voice: “Now I want him no longer to be called by a thrallish name like Hott. Let him be named for the sword Goldhilt he has earned.” Turning to the flushed young warrior, he said, “Henceforth you shall be Hjalti.”
That means “Hilt,” and the hilt he became of the king’s household, as Bjarki was the blade and Svipdag the shield.
VI
From that day onward, Bjarki and his friend had the goodwill, or the outright worship of the guards. At first the lad was not seen much in the hall. After bringing goods to help his parents, he made up for lost time by mowing a swathe through all the women to be had for many miles around. Bjarki stayed graver. He won the close fellowship of the king, who made great gifts to him, and of eye-patched Svipdag. Together those three held long talks about how to widen and strengthen the kingdom and what might be done for its welfare.
Bjarki also began to see a good deal of Hrolf’s oldest daughter Drifa, who was becoming a handsome lady. And, being more among the warriors then was possible for the king—who must go to Things, hear out the troubles and quarrels of folk, give judgments, play host to visitors, watch over his own broad landholdings, and on and on—Bjarki strove to make the troop mend its ways.
Svipdag told him: “I think our twelve berserkers are the root of the ill behavior here. They browbeat most of the men, who then have to take it out on somebody
weaker. I wish we could get rid of them, and I’m sure King Hrolf wishes likewise, useful though they can be in a fight. But they are his sworn followers and have given him no real cause to dismiss them.”
“Where are they now?” the Norseman asked.
“They’ve been at the head of a band which harried about in Saxon lands. See you, the king doesn’t want to bring those under him. They’ve too many ties further south. But they have been bothering us—egged on by the Swedish jarl of Als is my guess. And we can’t well haul the Jutes into Denmark, as we hope to, till it’s been pounded into the Saxons that they’d better leave us alone. Our raiders decided to winter there. They’ll be back in spring.”
Later Bjarki asked Hjalti what to await from these berserkers. The younger man told of the way they had on arrival of bracing everyone in the hall and asking if he reckoned himself as doughty as them. “They’ve learned to make this only a token as far as the king goes, or those three brothers from Svithjodh; but the rest must needs humble themselves.”
Said Bjarki: “Small is the number of bold men here with King Hrolf, if they bear words of scorn from the berserkers.”
Time flowed on. The evening came when, as the household was settling down to its meal, the door flew open and in came the twelve huge men, gray with iron, shining to look on like icefields.
Bjarki whispered to Hjalti, “Do you dare match yourself against any of them?”
“Any or all.”
The dozen lumbered to the high seat and questioned King Hrolf in their wonted words. He answered in such wise as he found prideful while keeping the uneasy peace. Next they went along the benches. One by one, in hate-filled voices, the warriors called themselves the weaker.
Agnar, their headman, had seen Bjarki and thought this was not a little boy who had come. Nonetheless he hulked over the Norseman and growled, “Well, Redbeard, do you think you’re as good as me?”
Bjarki smiled. “No,” he purred, “I do not. I deem myself better than you, you filthy son of a mare.”
He leaped to his feet, grabbed the berserker’s belt, swung him on high and dashed him to the floor so that the crash resounded. Hjalti did likewise to the next.
Men shouted. The berserkers howled. Bjarki stood holding Agnar down under his foot, a knife in his hand. Hjalti had drawn the sword Goldhilt, and from behind it grinned at the half score who milled and mouthed before him.
Hrolf sprang out of the high seat and sped thither. “Hold off!” he cried to Bjarki. “Keep the peace!”
“Lord,” said the Norseman, “this knave is going to lose his life unless he owns himself the lesser man.”
The king gazed upon the pair who lay stunned beneath the two friends. “That’s easily done,” he said, not quite able to stay wholly earnest.
Agnar mumbled something and Bjarki let him get up, as Hjalti did for the other. Everybody took his seat, the berserkers theirs with heavy hearts.
Hrolf stood forth and talked sternly to his troopers. Tonight, he told them, they had seen how none was so bold, strong, or big that his like could not be found. “I forbid you to awaken more strife in my hall. No matter who breaks my ban, it shall cost him his life. Against my foes you can be as angry and raging as you wish, and so win honor and fame. Before as goodly a flock of warriors as you are, I need not keep still. I say to you, make yourselves worthy of yourselves!”
All praised the words of the king and swore friendship.
It was but skin deep on the part of the berserkers. They kept their hatred for Bjarki and Hjalti, losing no chance to backbite these and giving them never a word which was not surly. However, they dared not make real trouble. After they stopped pestering and humbling the rest of the men, the latter soon lost their own overweening ways toward others. In a while, not only hirelings but the very thralls said that King Hrolf’s garth was a happy place to be.
The warriors were much away from it, however, for in those days he was bringing the Jutes under him. Great
were the deeds done on strands, hills, and heaths, in woods and dales; and wily, too, were the schemings which Hrolf set forth. The tale of his warfaring would get overly long, for it is only a tale of victories.
At home he dwelt in splendor. This is how he seated his men: On his right was Bjarki, acknowledged the foremost among them and therefore the marshal. They had come to call him Bodhvar-Bjarki, Battle-Bjarki, which fitted so well that today he is often spoken of as Bodhvar, as if that were the name his father bestowed on him. But Bjarki is right, and more than one lay calling men forth to fight is known as a Bjarkamaal. However terrible in war, he was a cheerful and openhanded soul, always spared the lives of foemen who yielded, never took a woman against her will, and loved to make small children laugh.
On his right in turn sat Hjalti the High-Minded. The king had given him that nickname. For every day he was among the guardsmen who had been so tough on him, and took no revenge even though he had now waxed far stronger than any of them, and though Hrolf would surely have found it forgiveable if he had handed out a few remembrances.
Beyond him sat several who were reckoned among the best: Hromund the Hard, the king’s namesake Hrolf the Swift-Coming, Haaklang, Hard-Hrefill, Haaki the Bold, Hvatt the High-Born, and Starulf.
On the king’s left were those who stood below none save Bjarki and Hjalti—Svipdag, Beigadh, and Hvitserk. To the left of these were the berserkers under Agnar. They were moody benchmates, but their strength earned them this honor. Anyhow, the brothers from Svithjodh were not very outgoing. Svipdag especially was apt to brood when in his cups, as if recalling someone from years agone.
Elsewhere, on both sides, the hall was full of picked fighting men, to the number of three long hundreds. A boisterous crew they were, a merry and breakneck lot; the burg roared with them, the whole surrounding countryside did.
There were still more household workers, and usually guests. As the fame of King Hrolf heightened, and the Danish waters and highways were cleared of robbers, ships lay to at Roskilde, Cheaping-Haven, and other ports, with goods that might come from Finland or the Icy Sea, from Ireland or Russia or the deep heart of Saxland, or further yet. To trade, the Danes had fish and amber out of the waves, meat and butter and cheese and honey off their fat farms. But they themselves were laying ever more keels and turning ever more prows outward.
It was costly to live as King Hrolf did, the more so because he was the most lavish of gift-givers. However, the wealth that came in as the range of his peace broadened was enough and to spare. Besides getting payments from his under-kings, he was himself the owner of lush acres and widely faring seacraft. He did not need to lay heavy scot on fisheries, farms, and trade; nor, when his warfaring dwindled for lack of foes, did he miss the booty he used to win.