Odin’s Child (44 page)

“You do care for me. Lucky woman that I am to have such a defender! But I am vexed when we quarrel. Please, lovely Skinny Man, don't kill my storyteller.” One taloned hand stroked his shoulder while the other touched his lips—which twitched and curled as though an insect were walking on them. It was suddenly obvious that he loathed her.

“It is not my intention to kill him,” the Headsman replied. “Only to lock him up until the bandit is in our hands. To put him in that same pit where we put the hullu—for a few days only.”

Louhi pouted. “But then he will shake like the hullu when he comes out. I don't want two shakers.”

“Oh, not this brave young fellow—and so fortified with poetry?” The Headsman could scarcely disguise his smile.

Louhi looked doubtful. “If you think so. But he is not to be beaten, I won't have it—and no snakes.”

“Certainly not,” Joukahainen murmured, touching his forehead. At his signal I was jerked to my feet.

Hrapp had betrayed me after all. He had run out of hope that I could save him. Now in his crazed mind I was simply the hated rival, out to steal the pitiful crumbs of his existence. And this was his revenge. He must have wormed our plan out of Ainikki. And what new tortures would
Joukahainen invent for her now? I stole a glance at her. She stood white-lipped and still as a post, seeming to see nothing.

“Take him out,” ordered the Headsman.

As they turned me around, Louhi piped encouragingly, “Remember, Viikinki, Hairy-Breeks' brave song…”

The last face I saw was Hrapp's, contorted with malice. I promised myself to kill him, if I lived long enough.

†

I lay in pitch darkness on a putrid bed of refuse, slimy with decay and crawling with life, in a space no wider than my outstretched arms nor higher than my head. My foot touched the sticky carcass of some dead animal. This was the abandoned well, now a trash pit, inside its sagging well-house, where once they had buried Hrapp; a grave now, covered by a wooden lid weighted with a stone.

Insects swarmed over me, running up my shirt and pants' legs. A rat's tail brushed my face. I flung myself away, striking out in a frenzy, feeling the scream come up in my throat. How long had Hrapp held out before he began to quake? Was he listening for my screams now? I ground my teeth and fought it down. “You'll wait long, damn you!”

Squatting against the wall, I hugged my knees and began to rock back and forth, back and forth—slower and slower, until I sank at last into a drifting mindlessness.

Ages passed.

A scratching above me roused me from my stupor. Looking up, I saw a sliver of yellow appear in the black and grow wider.

Too soon to let me go, I thought. Joukahainen's come to kill me after all.

I tensed for my last fight.

“Viikinki? Odd?”

“Ainikki!”

I was out of the hole in an instant and huddling beside her on the dirt floor of the shed. In the light of her lamp, the shadows appeared deep under her eyes and in the hollows of her cheeks.

“You're bleeding,” she said, touching my forehead. “He promised not to beat you.”

“I must have done it to myself when I was dancing with the rats.”

“I'll sing a charm to Pain Girl to ease it for you.”

“Ainikki, how did you get away? If you're in danger—”

“Not for a while yet. Joukahainen is bedded with Louhi tonight in her closet. She insisted on it—it seems he hasn't done his duty in a long time.”

“If he were anyone but Joukahainen he'd have my sympathy.”

“And everyone else is asleep, it's nearly dawn.”

“I was afraid they'd chain you up after filthy, bloody Hrapp…”

“Oh, don't curse him, the poor man, this was all his idea. Didn't you see him wink? There was no other way to get you alone, with Joukahainen always underfoot. And the best thing about it is that they won't bother with you for days now.”

“It was
planned
? But Joukahainen could have killed me!”

“We had to take the chance. Here. I've brought food scraps from the tables,”—she thrust a rucksack at me—“and here's a tinderbox and a knife. I wanted to bring you proper weapons, but I couldn't manage. I know where some are, though—in the loft where I sleep sometimes when … when Joukahainen is finished with me. There's a whole pile of swords and spears there.”

“Clever girl! They must be ours. Now then, how to find your home?”

“Even an ugly viikinki like you could find it.” She pulled her eyebrows down and pushed out her lips to imitate my face, and grinned mischievously. It was the first time I'd seen her smile. Suddenly, we were both merry, holding on to each other and giggling like a couple of sillies. Because it was all right now. In just a few days we would be free of this horror.

“Stop now, my girl, be serious.”

“Yes—seriously—” she swallowed her laughter. “All right. Four days' walk, no more, with the sea on your right. It's not a fortress like this. Everyone keeps to his own farm. Whomever you meet, ask them to take you to Slack Water Farm, to see Old Vainamoinen. Remember the name, Vainamoinen. He'll see to the rest.”

“Well, then,” said I, hoisting the rucksack to my shoulder. “I'm ready.”

“Of course you aren't ready!” I haven't taught you the charms. Now listen closely and say them after me until you know them by heart.”

“But Ainikki…”

“Hush! It's just your good luck that I'm an expert in these matters.
She wrinkled her forehead in concentration, a careful mother instructing her child. “Where to begin? Yes … the charm for calming snakes—the fens are full of them. It goes like this. Say it after me.”

“Ainikki…”

“Say it after me.”

I gave up and did my best to repeat the jingling words, which hardly made any sense.

“You
are
quick—for an outlander. You must learn the charm for admonishing bears—we always speak politely to the bear, and the one for setting out on a journey.”

“Ainikki, enough.”

“Stop arguing. The one for averting wood demons starts…”

We were in the middle of the one to drive away Fog Girl, when I heard a cock crow and, a moment later, an anxious tapping on the wall.

“Oh, great Ukko,” she gasped, “we're not half through.”

“Ainikki, I'm going. It's now or never. I won't spend another day in the pit.”

“Oh, I hope I've told you the right things. If you get lost, pray to keen-eyed Tapio, who guides hunters on their way.”

“That I will, and to Odin, and Thor, and the White Christ, and Blessed Olaf, and anyone else who comes to mind.”

Outside the door stood Hrapp, with his arms jiggling, shoulders jumping, and head rolling as though he were a jointed doll on a string.

“Friend Hrapp,” I put my arm around his shoulder and looked into his blinking eyes, “I'm at a loss how to thank you for risking my life in a witless, hare-brained scheme that could have gone wrong in a hundred ways—but you've risked your own life, too, and I won't forget it. You may pull an oar on my ship for as long as you like to—and that day isn't far off now.”

“I won't pretend I always meant you well,” he stammered. “Thank this little'un here for making me heel over and change course. Jesu, try and argue with her!”

“I know what you mean.”

“But Odd—or Captain, if I'm to call you that—I must tell you something now that won't please you.”

We had been speaking in Finnish out of habit. Now he switched to Norse. “The barley is nearly ripe. When the last of it is cut, they will kill
all your men—all. I saw 'em do it to my mates and many another. Once a year, after the barley is in, they bring the sampo out of the hill and the wizards carry it round the stubble. And whatever prisoners they have on hand they wrap 'em up in straw and slit their throats so that their blood runs over the sampo and onto the ground. They reckon it strong magic—and it saves them the feeding of idle mouths all winter.”

I sank back against the wall. “Must everything conspire against us? Damn their bloody superstition!”

He gave me a quizzical look. “If I hadn't been told the contrary, Captain, why, I'd take you for a Christman, the way you talk.”

I was in no fit condition to answer that one.

“Does Ainikki know this?”

“I think so.”

Bending low, Hrapp, Ainikki, and I dashed across the open yard, making for a stretch of the rampart, on the side opposite the meadow-gate, where the forest curved nearest to the farm.

Under the wall, I hoisted my rucksack, climbed onto Hrapp's unsteady shoulders, and stretched for a handhold—the top was an arm's length beyond my reach!

“Ahhh, no,” Ainikki cried. She had been strong enough for everything but this.

We stared blankly at each other. In only minutes Pohjola would come awake.

“Hrapp, do we dare try a gate?”

“All guarded through the night.”

“Wait a minute, I have it. The woodpile by the hall—there's an axe there.”

He nodded and disappeared.

Minutes crept by. The palisade's sharp teeth showed black against the lightening sky. Ainikki, shivering in the chill of dawn, crouched beside me. I circled her with my arm and held her to me. She found my hand and put her small hand in it, just as if I were—what? a comrade? a brother in arms? a lover? Surely not.

Somewhere a baby woke, crying.

More than likely I will die out there, I thought, and never have told her that I love her.

“Ainikki”—my mouth was sticky—“darling Ainikki, listen—”

Footsteps. Clutching the axe, Hrapp scuttled out of the dark.

“No time to lose,” he panted, “they're stirring in the hall.”

With a wrench I let her go, standing up quickly. “Good-bye, my friends. Hrapp, not a word of where I've gone to anyone but Stig. He's in command now.”

“Odd.” She came close to me, taking my hair in her hands, pressing her slim body to mine, and kissed me—one shy kiss that landed on my chin, and one long lingering kiss, a woman's kiss, that drew my soul inside her. “Come back, Viikinki.”

“That I will, brave girl,” I answered her with a smile. “Believe it.”

Once again mounting Hrapp's unsteady shoulders, I hooked the axe head over the top of the wall and pulled myself up hand over hand.

“Good luck,” Hrapp whispered.

“It's what I'm known for.”

I dropped down heavily into the ditch on the other side, scrambled up over the lip, and raced for the trees.

Once again, I found myself in the deep woods—ancient, close, impenetrable, and vast as the sea. The great pines touched heads so high above me that they nearly shut out the sky, while around their feet sprawled lesser tribes of birch and willow, and ferns as high as my waist.

And everywhere there was water—in oily pools, black with peat, in vast lakes, and in the treacherous fens that could swallow a cow at a gulp. I swam as often as I walked. Day or night, my clothes were never dry. I skirted one great swamp so far inland that I lost my way and wandered for two days, desperate over the lost time, before I found the coast again.

I nursed a hope, too, of stumbling upon that creek we had sailed up in the Viper, and finding her still where we had left her. One stream I followed for miles, positive that I recognized landmarks we had passed, only to give up finally in fury and confusion.

The scraps of food Ainikki had given me lasted three days. When they were gone I began to starve. The woods teemed with beaver, otter, and squirrel, the fens with teal and goldeneye, and the lakes with pike. All of them mocked me. I chased animals on foot till I dropped, flung my knife uselessly, and cursed Ainikki for not equipping me with something so simple as a fishhook and a bit of string.

And then there were the things that wanted to eat me. One whole day I spent up a tree, mumbling Ainikki's charm with all the politeness I could muster, while a she-bear and her cub prowled below. And the nights I spent
by my fire, hearing wolves in the wailing of the wind. It was often that I prayed to kindly Tapio, but it was Kammo the panic-maker who dogged my footsteps.

I had eaten nothing in five days when I stumbled out of the trees one morning into a field of grain. I can recall the women, who were bundling sheaves, running and shouting for their men, and the bright, blue sky revolving slowly around my head as I sank to my knees and rocked back on my heels. And then came blackness as I pitched over on my face in the grass.

†

I struggled up from a deep well of sleep, plucking idly at drifting shreds of speech: “forest … the filth … yes, your name, very clear … he's stirring, Vainamoinen.”

Memory rushed back. I blinked away a cloud of black dots that swam and popped before my eyes, and slowly there came into focus a mountain avalanche of snow-white brows and hair and beard, with two bright blue eyes peering out.

“They thought you spoke my name, stranger, and so they sent for me. What do you want with Old Vainamoinen?”

I managed to croak that before anything else, I wanted food. He made way for the farmwife on whose floor I lay, and she spooned broth and beer into me. When I could feel a little strength returning, I began the speech that I'd rehearsed for days.

The old patriarch, Vainamoinen, looked on as I spoke, giving no sign of surprise at anything I said. When my tale was done, he heaved himself up, and, turning to a slim youth who hovered behind him, said quietly, “Find the Rover.”

The beer was making me light-headed and I wanted to sleep some more. As the farmwife piled coverlets over me, I thought I might never willingly move again. And, in fact, I didn't until the next day's sun was high in the sky.

†

Lemminkainen the Rover came in the afternoon, slipping silently out
of the woods with twenty crossbowmen at his back. He was a handsome man, not yet thirty, lithe and slender, with his sister's straight nose and strong jaw. His equipment was more elegant than I would have expected of a homeless renegade, with ornamented shoes turned up at the toes, a belt of silver and amber over his leather jacket, a ring in his ear, and fine looking weapons.