Fieldborn

The old year died today, the sun a pink line on the horizon and cold grey twilight sharpening the edges of the fjord. 

I was working for Skali, the Shipwright, down at the dock, touching up the paint on the new longship with numb fingers, ice on the planks under my knees, brash grinding and moaning below in the restless sea. Carefully, I added touches of ox-blood red to the outstretched claws of the stooping eagle carved into her prow, which was her name, Aegir-Orm—only stopping to stir the horn-pot so it didn’t freeze, ignoring the fresh weal on my shoulder but glancing now and then at the giver, Skali, who paced the dock, cudgel in hand, in as dark a mood as I’d ever seen him. Behind me, the Orm stretched long and low towards the shore, smelling of paint, tar, and new-carved wood – waiting for the tide. 

Gods, the Orm! People still talk of her now, years later. Never was such a ship. Sleek as a seal, sixty feet from prow to steering oar, her oak planks fit closer than the scales of a fish. Thirty oars, each shaped like a feather, were ready under the rowing benches, and painted shields covered her sides, red and gold. Greenery and white snowberries wove between them down the sides – strips of white cloth fluttered up to a stepped mast from the rigging. Above all, the eagle pennant streamed in the chill wind blowing gently out to sea. All that was needed was for the embroidered sail, a thing of wonder itself, half a winter in the making, and she would fly.

The lone sound of the horn and we were like rats in a grain store when the doors thrown open. Paints and brushes were grabbed from stiff hands and tossed heedlessly into a pail pushed under tarred canvas, thrown over barrels, wood and tools alike. Skali shouted and cursed, cuffing and booting the slow, while a tide of fresh straw was strewn on the jetty, and us thralls washed away, in front of it. 

Out of sight, I stopped behind some sheaves on the shore to watch even so, with little chance of being found or whipped. The horn sounded again, and I saw the first of the torches winding down from the long house. The drums started, a slow beat, one-two, one, like a failing heart, and I saw him. 

Ten house carls, front-rankers all, with greased mail, shield and belted axe, held up the bier, draped with five dowries worth of soft white fur. On it, our lord these twenty winters, the Jarl Sigurson, dressed in his finery, wrapped in a cloak of green velvet, the torchlight glinting from gold torc and jewelled sword. 

A step behind, alone, torch in hand, came the new Jarl, the eldest son, Harald, a slim gold band holding back his thick black hair, his beard and face grey with mourning ash, followed by the priests of Odin, Thor and Frey. Then the rest: Carls, Stead-holds and their houses, the whole settlement winding down to the shore to the sound of the slow, deep drum where Skali stood, a dozen sailors spread down the jetty behind him, and the Orm rising overall, ghostly in the weak daylight.

The bier reached the strand, the drums stopped, and the sudden silence caught at my throat.  All I could hear was the soft wind and the crackle of torches as the crowd watched and wondered what the Fates had in store for them now. The old Jarl had been a hard man with cruel moods, But all agreed he’d been lucky in his raids and open-handed with the spoil. But the son, the Jarl Harold? – he was like the Orm. New and strong, but untried.  The weal on my back told me it made no difference who was Jarl. My father’s crime had made my mother a slave, and I would die like her— with an iron collar around my neck.

All of us thralls were stunted by too little food, and I slid like an eel through the forest of legs over to one edge, out of the light to where I could see. The bier had been placed just in front of the mast, resting on bales of straw covered in fine green cloth; the priests making the final rights of oil and blood. Then, the sail was raised and tied home, and the old Jarl was aboard his new ship, torch guttering at prow and stern, glinting off the treasure he was taking with him to Valhalla. And not alone, not a Jarl. I’d seen the thralls, bed-girls and hounds lying in quiet, soft death under the benches that luck or fate had spared me.

The horn sounded again; there was a sigh from the crowd as the ropes were untied, and the sailors on the jetty held her like a hawk by its jesses before they let her hunt. The wind took her, slowly at first, then faster, and I was watching as the fire arrow arched through the darkening sky and down to set the Orm ablaze. I watched with the silent crowd as she flew on fire stem to stern until a dot in the dark. She slid under the waves one moment to the next and was gone. And, as I turned away, I noticed Skali still watching, still as a figurehead where the Orm, his ship, had burned, And blood dripped from his clenched fists into the snow.