The Ice Queen (36 page)

“Ah, Lyudmila, what feelings, what memories of my own family, your words stir in me. My father too fought against the Christmen and was driven mad by them. And Putscha knows all this?”

“He guesses. From childhood on, he has done everything to harden and strengthen himself. Jumping, tumbling, lifting huge stones by the hour. All to be the son his father wanted. But in his own mind it is never enough.”

And so, I thought, he struts about with his chest stuck out and his little wooden sword in his belt. I sighed inwardly. It would be harder to dislike him now.

“You said there was a daughter, too.”

“Famine and pestilence carried her off some fifteen years ago. It's just as well. She and her brother behaved as man and wife, you see, since neither could find another dwarf to mate with. Poor Nenilushka was their child. It was during that famine that Putscha sold himself and his little daughter into the princess' service. We never could have survived otherwise.

“My clever Putscha became the princess's eyes and ears. And Nenilushka was given to Yelisaveta, who was still a baby then, to be her dolly—one that walked and talked! There seemed nothing against it at the time. And, as the two girls grew up, we hoped that Nenilushka's weak mind would preserve her from court intrigues. We were wrong.”

“Your family has born too many misfortunes, ma'am.”

“No more than most. Anyway, what is life for heathens but misfortune?”

“Aye, that's true enough.” Then, in a few words, I sketched my own history and told her of my vow to go home one day and kill my enemies.

“Then I wish you good luck, gospodin. Meanwhile, in such a hard world as this should we not take our pleasure where we find it?”

“To be sure.”

Having finished with the goat, she sat with her hands folded in her lap. Those pale-as-water eyes regarded me gravely under their long white lashes. A red flush rose up her throat and touched her cheeks with color.

“Gospodin Odd, I am not young but would you—?”

“I would with pleasure, Lyudmila Ilyavna.”

She led the way to a shadowy glade beyond sight of the house, in case her son should awaken sooner than expected. I never had a more tender lover than this white-haired woman. She was like cool water to my wounded spirit. Afterwards, I lay with my head in her lap and let her search my hair for lice.

“I can see why they call you Tangle-Hair,” she said.

“You know my nick-name? What else do you know? Did Ingigerd ever talk about me?—not that I care.”

She smiled at that. “What a vain young man you are! Even while you hate her, you want to hear compliments. Well, she said you were as ugly as a tchernobog. What d'you think of that?”

“Hmpf. Did she say nothing good about me at all?”

“I'll not give away her secrets, even to please you, my friend. I'll only say, dear Tangle-Hair, that she didn't exaggerate.” Lyudmila touched me between the legs.

Late in the afternoon Putscha awoke and we three shared a meager dinner of porridge and goat cheese. With the last few drops of thin beer that remained, Lyudmila poured a libation to the domovoi, the guardian spirits, of the house.

Later, as we talked, I said, “I must get back into Novgorod, there's a man there I've sworn to kill.”

“What a great many you have sworn to kill, gospodin Odd,” Lyudmila laughed.

Putscha looked at us in puzzlement a moment; then began to rail at me: “You'll be putting your neck in the noose if you do—and mine and my mother's besides. You're no match for bloody Harald. He'll flog you until you confess how you got away and where you hid.”

“You shame me, Putscha Churillovich,” I answered truthfully. “I confess that I have not the fortitude of a dwarf.” (His chest swelled with pride.) “But I must manage it somehow. Lyudmila, can you sew me a shirt of invisibility such as old tales tell of?”

“No,” she answered, “but I can do something that will serve nearly as well, if you agree to it. The men of the Volga wear their hair and mark their bodies in a peculiar way, or, at least, did so when I was a girl. I decorated Churillo when we first met because he admired it so; he claimed it doubled his natural ferocity. If you'll permit me, your closest friend won't know you when I've finished.”

My transformation occupied most of four days.

First, for an hour, she honed the blade of a long, thin knife with which she shaved off my beard until only two long moustaches hung down. Following that, she shaved my scalp, leaving just a horse-tail of hair sprouting from the middle of it, which she tied up in a knot. This took all of an evening.

“Tomorrow,” she said, “I will go into the woods to find the berries I need.”

She was away all the next day while I endured Putscha's boasting and haughty looks. When she returned, more hours were spent in pounding and grinding her ingredients and still more in sharpening a sparrow's wing-bone to a needle point.

“Tomorrow morning,” she said, “when the light is strong.”

In the cool of the morning I sat outside on the milking stool with my shirt off. She began with the fingers of my right hand, dipping her needle in the little bowl of blue ooze that she had mixed, and pricking my skin with it.

By end of day she had covered both my arms from fingertips to shoulder with a tracery of whorls and spirals that wound in and out without beginning or end.

“Amazing!” I exclaimed, spreading my fingers and holding my arms out before me. “And I'll take good care not to wash until the need for disguise is past.”

“Oh, don't bother yourself about that,” said she.

“Eh?”

Putscha let out a snort of laughter.

That night I felt feverish and my skin burned and itched; and the next day I did nothing while Lyudmila doctored me with various ointments and assured me that this was all quite normal. On the following day, feeling much improved, I rose early and made ready to walk back to Novgorod.

“Those fine clothes might give you away though, mightn't they?” she said thoughtfully. I was still dressed for Harald's coronation in my very best hat, tunic, shoes, and jewelry, everything fastened with silver and trimmed with fur.

“I've saved my husband's old things.”

“Mother!” Putscha looked shocked.

“Hush! Do you want him to be caught?”

“Give me your man's clothes, Lyudmila,” I said, “and take these of mine in return.”

“Why, that's kindly of you, Odd.” She went to a tiny chest that sat in a corner of the hut and took out the clothes, all carefully folded.

Without delay I put on her husband's well-worn boots, wide trousers, sleeveless tunic (which showed off my beautiful new arms), and broad belt of plain leather with a big buckle of tarnished brass. Around my neck I fastened his torque of twisted wrought iron with a Thor's hammer pendant.

“His sword and shield I cannot give you,” she said, “they are buried with him. But here is his broad-ax. It has chopped nothing but firewood these many years. May it taste the blood of your enemies.”

“I'm in your debt again.”

“Let us all be still for a moment now,” she said. “It's a good custom to be silent before someone sets out on a journey.”

We sat for a few moments, gazing silently at the floor. Then, “Good bye, my friend,” she said, rising and kissing me on both cheeks. “And wear this, its power is great.” She hung an amulet of carved bone around my neck.

I returned her kisses more warmly than one is accustomed to do with old women. But she was like no other I had known.

I tramped the woods for most of that day before reaching the outskirts of the city. As I drew near, the smell of smoke filled my nostrils and I began to notice signs of devastation all around me. Whole streets had been ransacked and burned out. Here and there people stood about or sat in silent groups or else wearily picked through the smoldering wreckage of their homes.

The Novgorodtsi are no strangers to fire. Hardly a month passes without some conflagration, and the people, patient and resigned, always set to work at once clearing and rebuilding. But this felt different. The faces I saw were grim and vengeful. Every man or youth I passed was armed and many, too, were bloodied. A bitter civil war had been waged here with steel and fire. At the moment all seemed quiet; who could say for how long?

I followed Yanina Street through the Nerev End towards the river, passing on my way the jail, or what remained of it. The painted bridge, at least, was intact, although I had to talk my way past suspicious guards at either end of it. The Market Side had fared only a little better than the Saint Sophia side. Yaroslav's dvor was unscathed except for blackened stretches of the palisade. Undamaged, too, were the Norwegian barracks, but those of the Swedes' together with the great merchant warehouses in Gotland Court were a complete loss. In the Court scores of wounded druzhiniks sat or lay stretched out on their cloaks—some of them
gambling or drinking; most doing nothing. I felt their eyes on me as I picked my way among them to the Norwegians' quarters.

There one of Harald's former men—a fellow who knew me well—lounged in the doorway, gnawing a mutton bone. He looked straight into my eyes and asked me my name and business.

I swallowed hard and replied “Churillo Igorevich,” in Rus-accented Norse. “I look for Harald, the giant.”

“Gone,” he sneered. “Cleared out.”

My heart sank. “Gone where? Who might know?”

The fellow gave a shrug. “Wait here.”

A moment later who should appear in the doorway but Dag Hringsson. I should have seen his hand in this all along!

“And who might you be?” he asked.

A moment later, he stood laughing and scratching his head in astonishment when, out of earshot of the others, I revealed myself.

“Damn my eyes! Well, one thing's sure: we can't call you Tangle-Hair anymore.”

“Walk with me along the river,” I said, “we have things to talk about.”

He grimaced with pain and touched his thigh which was tightly bandaged. Leaning on a stick, he limped along beside me. I asked how he came to be here and what had happened.

“What happened is that the Swedes and Norwegians fought the Novgorodtsi until the whole place turned into one big bonfire. Many were killed on both sides—one of them our friend the mayor. Now it's a stand-off—they on their bank of the river, we on ours. And all for the sake of rescuing the fair Ingigerd—and you too, I might add. You have a lot of friends among Harald's men.”

“Rescuing me or killing me to keep me quiet? Someone tried to roast Putscha and me in our cell.”

“Ah, well, that was suggested by Ragnvald, though I opposed it—much too fond of you for that; and feeling a bit guilty, too, if you must know. I owe you an apology, Odd. I'm the one who spoiled your party. After Harald dismissed me, you see, I sailed home to Stavangerfjord, where my lands are. It so happened that I was in the neighborhood the day that you and the jarls put into the fjord for food and fresh water on your way south. Any fleet of unknown dragon ships is cause for alarm to the local people and so they ran to tell me. I got there in time to see you
at a distance without being seen. Now, where could you and the Tronder jarls be going, I asked myself, if not to Novgorod for some purpose involving Harald?

“To say it short, I followed you to Aldeigjuborg in my own ship. There I lay low until you got fed up with waiting and took yourself off to Novgorod. Then Ragnvald and I went to work on the jarls. Not that I have great hopes for little Magnus as a king, mind you, but that's of no importance for the moment. Anyway, I came here with the jarls and kept out of sight in a house that Ragnvald keeps in the town.”

“But damn it, Dag,” I protested, “it's you who got me here in the first place with the promise that Harald would be king of Norway someday. Your parting words to me were ‘stay the course'. And then you turn right around and do this! I call it unfriendly of you.”

“Yes, yes but how could I have known that a chance to do him harm would come along so soon? I couldn't let that pass, now could I? Come, you'd have done the same thing yourself.”

I supposed I would have. “All right, I bear you no grudge.”

“I'm glad of it, my friend.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “Anyway, I ask you to believe that I did everything I could to save you. While Yngvar and his Swedes recaptured lovely Ingigerd from her guards, I made straight for the bishop's palace with Jarl Kalv and his men. There we ran up against Harald with a few Rus, holding the stairs. He and I faced each other with drawn swords at last. I tried with all the strength and skill in me to kill him, and he likewise. Neither of us succeeded, but he left me this leg for a souvenir. He and his comrades beat a retreat when we found the back stairs and got around behind them, though by that time the mayor's militiamen had carried you off.

“After that, the fight shifted back and forth across the river. Men of ours reported seeing Harald everywhere in the town, hunting for Norwegians, like so many rabbits, to punish them for deserting to Magnus. The boyars' army crossed the river in boats and sacked the warehouses. In revenge, Ragnvald organized a raid on their side to burn down their houses—and the jail, too, I've no doubt. I hope it will console you to learn that he didn't come back alive. Anyway, you saved yourself. Tell me all about it.”

I described the trial and my escape.

“So Ragnvald tried to stab you and Harald to flog you? Have you learned something about fishing on both sides of the stream, my boy?
Store it up as a lesson for the future. And, being lucky enough to escape with a whole skin, you've come back in this colorful get-up? Why?”

“Can't you guess? But Fate has cheated me. When did he leave, where would he have gone?”

“Ah, I see. All I can tell you is that when order was restored, Yaroslav safe on his throne, and Inge at her husband's side again—for the old fool believes her lies—Harald found himself suddenly without friends. The jarls were out for his blood by order of Magnus; he could hardly go back to Yaroslav after calling his wife a whore; and even the boyars, whose cause he took up, had no use for him. To them he was, after all, just another greedy outlander.