The Sea of Trolls

For answer, Thorgil dashed her wooden platter to the floor. “I do not do women’s work!” she cried.

“There iss no shame in it. You are one of us, like it or not.”

Everyone stopped talking. A breathless silence fell over the hall, broken only by the crackling of the fire.

“Pick up your things!” roared Olaf suddenly, sending a shock wave through the gathering.

“I’m not like them! I’m a shield maiden!” shouted Thorgil.

“You’re an orphan living on my goodwill. If any of my men behaved as you did, I’d grind his face into that mess you’ve just created. NOW MOVE!”

Thorgil knocked over her stool and fled out the door. No one tried to stop her. Heide shook her head and bent down to clean up the scattered stew and bread.

Jack sat back, his heart pounding. He felt sick to his stomach. He’d been next to Olaf when the giant roared, and his ears still rang. Even worse, the rage and anguish coming from Thorgil had struck him like a blow. He couldn’t understand it.

He was trained to serve the life force. When his mind was calm, he could feel its currents in the air, in the earth. He felt it between Rune and Heide, but that was no surprise. Heide was a wise woman and Rune was a skald. He liked them.

He absolutely hated Thorgil. She was crude and vicious. She gloried in death. There was nothing remotely attractive about her character, and yet… Jack remembered her walking up the street without a single person to greet her. Olaf had called her an orphan, so she had no family. He looked sideways at Rune calmly dipping his bread in his stew. “Where will she go?” Jack asked.

“Thorgil? She’ll sleep in the sauna.” The old warrior didn’t seem worried about it. “If there’s enough moonlight, she’ll go up the hill and crawl in with the king’s dogs.”

“Her brothers and sisters,” said one of Olaf’s sons, a stocky lad with the beginnings of a beard. His eyes were slightly tilted, and Jack guessed his mother was Heide. “They’re the only ones who’ll put up with her.”

“That’s enough, Skakki,” said Olaf. “She can’t help her rages. She gets them from her father, and Odin knows, there was never a finer berserker.”

Everyone murmured assent. “Are the king’s dogs big and gray?” asked Jack.

“I see you’ve met them,” said Olaf.

It was amazing how quickly the giant could switch from fury to cheerful good-naturedness. But Jack knew he could switch back just as fast. “They ran at Lucy and me this afternoon, but they didn’t hurt us,” he said.

“They’d never hurt a child,” Skakki said. “You could put Hilda in their food dish”—he pointed at a somewhat overblown infant suckling noisily at Lotti’s breast—“and they wouldn’t even growl.”

“Don’t let them see a wolf, though,” said Olaf. “Thor himself couldn’t hold them back then.”

“You might as well tell him the story,” said Lotti, moving Hilda, who screamed at the interruption, to the other breast.

Olaf leaned back in his great chair, making it groan dangerously. “Thorgil’s father,” he began, “was the greatest berserker who ever lived. His name was Thorgrim. He was always the first into battle and the last to leave. By the time he was sixteen, he had a necklace of troll teeth. His greatest bane, though, was his rage. When it came upon him, he neither saw nor heard what was around him.”

“You couldn’t stop him,” said Skakki. “I remember.”

“He had no proper wife—no one would marry him,” Olaf said. “But he had a thrall. A Saxon. I forget her name.”

“It was Allyson, dear ox-brain,” said Heide. “Trust you to forget a woman’s name.”

“Anyhow, this Allyson gave him a son called Thorir. I told you what happened to him.”

“Yes,” said Jack, remembering the terrible murder.

“Afterward Allyson wasn’t the same. She hardly seemed aware of anything around her. When she had a baby girl, the only word she said was ‘Jill’. That was her name for the child.”

“Only she had no right to name it, being a thrall,” Skakki said.

“The midwife took it to Thorgrim, and he rejected it.”

“Rejected it?” cried Jack. Such a thing was unheard of. No matter how ugly a baby was, it was sent by God. You had to love it.

“It is a father’s right,” said Olaf, looking sternly at his numerous offspring. It was obvious he’d never rejected one, and they didn’t look at all worried about it.

“He wanted a boy,” whispered Rune. Everyone fell silent to let him be heard. “He wanted one to replace Thorir, and when the child was a girl, he ordered it thrown out into the forest.”

Jack was so shocked, he couldn’t speak.

“So the midwife took it far from the house and laid it under a tree,” Olaf continued. “King Ivar had received a pair of Irish wolfhounds as a gift, and the bitch had given birth not long before. She went for a run in the forest and came upon the infant. I guess it was screaming.”

“Like my Hilda,” Lotti said fondly, unplugging her infant.

“She threw herself down and nursed it, just as though it were a puppy. When the keeper went to look for the bitch, he found her curled around the infant, keeping it warm.”

“You keep saying ‘it’ when you talk of the baby,” said Jack. “Wasn’t it a girl?”

“It was nothing yet,” said Rune. “It had not been accepted.”

“But now Thorgrim had a problem,” Olaf said. “Our law says that a child, once suckled, cannot be abandoned. Like it or not, the royal dog had suckled it. Thorgrim was forced to take it—now her— back. He named her Thorgil and handed her over to Allyson.”

“Who never looked twice at her,” said Heide. “She fed her and that was all. Thorgil’s father ignored her too. The only one to give her any love was the bitch, and afterward her puppies.”

So that was the story! It was as amazing as any tale the Bard had taught Jack. It would make a wonderful poem, except that it was so sad. It needed a happier ending, one Jack promised himself to work on.

The conversation turned to other things. After a while the warmth and good food made Jack extremely sleepy. Heide led him away to an outlying hut, where he was given a heap of straw and a rough blanket. Several young thralls were already snoring. Lucy had been put to bed in a corner of the great hall.

The blanket was full of fleas—Jack felt them hopping about—but he was too sleepy to care. He was vaguely aware when Pig Face, Dirty Pants, and Thick Legs came in later, smelling of sour beer and sweat, to burrow into the straw.

Chapter Twenty-one GOLDEN BRISTLES

The next day Jack learned that no matter how well treated he’d been at the feast, he was a thrall, would always be a thrall, and would always look like a thrall to anyone he met. At daybreak he was pulled roughly from his bed by Dirty Pants and marched over to the farm’s forge. There Dirty Pants hammered a slave collar into shape. The man forced the open ring around Jack’s neck and wrenched it shut with a pair of tongs. “I made it big so you’d have room to grow,” he commented. “You’re to muck out the pig barn. It’s that building near the apple trees.”

Jack stumbled from the forge, numb with despair. His throat hurt where Dirty Pants had bruised it. The collar was cold against his skin and too large to hide beneath his tunic.

He walked in a dark dream toward the distant building Dirty Pants had indicated. The life force seemed far away, and even the rune, nestled invisibly on his chest, took on a chill from the iron collar. A flock of crows rose from the pigsty. They circled, complaining loudly, before settling down. They had nothing to fear. It was only a thrall coming to muck out the barn.

One of the birds, finer and glossier than the rest, pranced along the edge of the roof. “Bold Heart!” called Jack. “Don’t you remember me? It’s Jack.” But the bird gazed at him coldly and made no move to come nearer.

Surely it was the same crow. He was missing a claw on his left foot. “I know it’s you, Bold Heart,” said the boy. “I called you out of the sky and saved your life. I told Lucy you came from the Islands of the Blessed, and maybe you do. You’re awfully clever.”