The Yngling y-1 Read online

  The Yngling

  ( Yngling - 1 )

  John Dalmas

  John Dalmas

  The Yngling

  1.

  Nils Hammarson stood relaxed among a few freeholders, thralls, and two other sword apprentices, watching two warriors argue in the muddy beast trail. In his eighteenth summer, Nils's beard was still blond down, but he stood taller and more muscular than any sword apprentice of the Wolf Clan for many years. And sword apprentices were selected at puberty from among all the clan, even the sons of thralls, for their strength and keenness.

  The argument they listened to was personal and not a clan dispute. The clans of the Svear had met to hold a ting, and trade, and take wives. And though the ting now had closed, clan feuds were in abeyance until the clans dispersed to their own lands. Only personal fights were allowed.

  The warrior of the Wolf Clan was smaller and his beard more gray than brown, but he refused to back down before his larger, younger adversary. The warrior of the Eagle Clan suddenly shot out his large left hand to the necklace of wolves' teeth, jerked forward and down. The older man saw the move coming and kept his balance, although the leather thong bit hard into his neck sinews. He swung a knobby fist with his heavy shoulder behind it, driving a grunt from the younger. For a moment they grappled, each with a knife in his right hand and the other's knife wrist in his left. Briefly their arms sawed the air, their bare feet carrying them in a desperate dance, muscles bunched in their browned torsos while callused heels strove to trip.

  Then strength told, and the warrior of the Wolf Clan toppled backward. His breath grunted out as his heavier opponent fell on him; his left hand lost its sweaty grip and quickly the other's blade drove under his ribs, twisted upward through heart and lungs. For a brief moment, as his blood poured over his opponent's hand and forearm, his teeth still clenched and his right arm strained to stab. Then his body slackened, and the warrior of the Eagles arose, panting and grinning.

  Most of the watchers left. But Ragnar Tannson and Algott Olofson still stood, glaring at the killer of their clansman, for they were sword apprentices and nearly matured. There were narrow bounds on what they could say to a warrior, however, for warriors were forbidden to kill outside their class unless the terms of the feud specifically allowed. And this was not a feud at all yet, although it would probably be proposed and accepted as one.

  But the wish to kill was on their faces.

  The Eagle warrior looked at them, his grin widening to show a dead tooth that had turned gray. "I see the cubs are beginning to feel like real wolves," he said. His eyes moved to Nils Hammarson who stood, still relaxed, a slight smile on his face. "All but the big one, eh? A thrall's son I'll bet, strong as an ox and almost as quick. Or maybe your blood runs hot, too, but you hide it."

  Nils shifted his weight easily, and his voice was casual. "Nay, Du." For a sword apprentice to address a warrior with the familiar pronoun bordered on insolence. "I was memorizing your face. The old man lying there is my kinsman, Olof Snabbhann, and in one year I'll be wearing warrior's braids." He paused. "Not that everyone with braids deserves to be called warrior."

  The Eagle warrior's eyes narrowed in his darkening face and he strode toward the youth. He aimed a fist at the blond head. But the fist that met him was quicker; his steel-capped head snapped back and he fell heavily in the trampled mud, his head at an odd angle. Algott Olofson knelt by him quickly, then rose. "You've killed him," he said gravely.

  But the ting was over and crimes between clans would not be judged again until the next year. Therefore, Nils was free to go home. He spent his summer as any sword apprentice would, hunting bear and wild bulls, rowing out into the long lake to draw in nets, and particularly training, with his ring mates. They lifted boulders and wrestled. They swung, parried, and thrust at shadow enemies with heavy iron practice swords twice the weight of a war sword. They sparred with birch swords and weighted wooden shields, and sent arrows at staves marked with the totems of other clans.

  But if his activities were normal, the subtler things of life weren't. Everyone knew that at the next ting he would be judged, and when one remembered this, it was sometimes hard to be at ease with him. He could be executed. Or he could be labeled a renegade, to live alone in the forest without clan protection. In that case Eagle warriors would surely hunt him down and kill him. The least sentence possible was banishment.

  Nonetheless, Nils Hammarson seemed about as always-relaxed, mild-spoken and observant. He had changed mainly in one respect. Before, in sparring, he had usually been content to parry and counter, seldom pressing a vigorous attack. Although he invariably won anyway, the drillmaster had sometimes thrashed him for this. Now, without ferocity but overpoweringly, his birch club-sword thrust and struck like the weapon of a Barsark, making his bruised and abraded ringmates exceed themselves in sheer self-defense. Their drillmaster, old Matts Svaadkunni, grinned widely and often, happier than anyone could remember. "That is how a Wolf should fight," he would bellow. And he had a new practice sword forged for his protege, heavier than any other in the clan.

  Late in September, when the cold weather came, the sword apprentices butchered cattle, drinking the steaming blood, smearing each other with gore and brains, and draping entrails about their necks and shoulders so they would not be squeamish in battle. And in late October, after the first heavy snow, they slipped the upturned toes of their ski boots under the straps and hunted moose and wild cattle in the forests and muskegs. After that, as was customary for sword apprentices, Nils Hammarson wrapped cheese and meat in his sleeping bag of glutton skins, took his bow and short sword and went for days at a time into the rugged, uninhabited hills above Lake Siljan. But now he did not hunt the wolf, their clan totem, with a ringmate. In fact he did not hunt so much as travel, northwest even into the mountains of what tradition called Jamtland, where long glaciers filled the valleys. The great wanderer of the Svear, Sten Vannaren, told that the ice had moved down the valley more than three kilometers in five years. Someday, he said, the ice will reach the sea.

  Nils would have liked to have seen the glaciers in summer when the land was green, but he expected never to be here again.

  Not that he would be executed-struck down like an ox to have his head raised on a pole at the ting. The circumstances had not been that damning. And this belief was not born of hope, nor did it give rise to hope. It was a simple dispassionate evaluation that would prove correct or incorrect, but probably correct.

  And if it came down to it, he would escape. To his knowledge, no one had ever tried to escape a sentence of the ting. It would be considered shameful and jeopardize future lifetimes. But Nils did not believe it would be shameful for him, nor did his blood quicken at the thought.

  He simply knew that he was not intended to have his head lopped off before the clan.

  In July, after the hay was cut and stored, another ting was held. It heard a number of complaints and disputes. Warnings were given. Feuds were approved. Fines of cattle, potatoes and grain were levied, and backs flogged. A hand was cut off. And from a copper-haired head, runnels of blood dried on a pole at the ting ground.

  At the trial of Nils Hammarson, two witnesses were heard: Ragnar Tannson and Algott Olofson. They were Nils's friends and ringmates, but no one would lie to a ting. After their testimony, the council sat in quiet discussion in its tent for a time, then emerged and mounted the platform of hewn timbers. Warriors and freeholders covered the broad and trampled field. Axel Stornave, chief of the Svear, arose from his carved throne and stood before the clans in his cloak of white owl skins. His voice boomed, showing little sign of his sixty years.

  "Nils Hammarson angered a warrior," he said. "But his speech was within bounds, though barely.

  "Nil
s Hammarson struck a warrior whose attack on him was without arms and not deadly.

  "Nils Hammarson killed a warrior, though without intention.

  "Nils Hammarson is stripped of all rights but one, beginning with the second new moon from now. By that time he must be gone from the lands of the tribes. If he is not gone by the second new moon, he will be declared a renegade. Notice of this judgment will be sent to the Jotar and the Norskar, and they will not take him in.

  "One right is retained. Nils Hammarson is in his nineteenth summer and has fulfilled his sword apprenticeship. Where he goes he will be an outlander, unprotected by clans or laws. Therefore, when the ting is over, his hair will be braided and he will leave the land as a warrior."

  The Eagle Clan grumbled at this leniency, but the ting had ruled. Three days later, Ulf Vargson, chief of the Wolf Clan, plaited the hair of the six Wolf sword apprentices who were in their nineteenth summers and gave them their warrior names. And Nils Hammarson became Nils Jarnhann, "Iron Hand."

  2.

  Neovikings. The neovikings were members of a primitive, post-plague Terran culture that evolved in Sweden and Norway after the Great Death that left less than 10-4 of the pre-plague population alive. They consisted of three tribes: the Norskar in southern Norway, the Jotar in southern Sweden, and the Svear in central Sweden…

  The term "neovikings" was applied to them by the post-plague psionic culture known as the "kinfolk." In some respects neoviking was not an apt term, for they were not sea rovers. They were primarily herdsmen, although hunting and fishing rivalled livestock in their economy and they practiced some agriculture. Perhaps their outstanding cultural feature was their unusually martial orientation, and in this they did somewhat resemble the medieval vikings. Tribe warred against tribe, and clans carried on bloody feuds.

  They increased despite their love of bloodshed, however. Taboos, tribal laws and intertribal agreements restricted the causes of fighting, its circumstances and practices…

  History… The rapid climatic deterioration finally became critical. They found it necessary to store increasing quantities of forage as the season of pasturage became shorter. Crops became poorer, and some lands that had been farmed became too waterlogged and cold to grow crops. Had this happened three or four centuries earlier, they might have lapsed into a purely hunting and fishing culture, but they had become too numerous and sophisticated for that. A coastal clan, familiar with fishing boats, began to build vessels large enough to carry effective raiding parties to other parts of Europe. A rather close analog of the medieval viking culture might have developed, had not…

  (From the New School Encyclopedia, copyrighted A.C. 920, Deep Harbor, New Home.)

  3.

  It was no fishing boat, but a broad cargo ship made for the open sea and a full thirty meters long. The prow turned upward, and the end was carved and painted in the likeness of a sea eagle with wings partly folded. The water was choppy, and a brisk southwest wind blew. The ship's course being southwesterly, the sail was furled and the crew leaned into the oars, their brawny backs wet with sweat. Through the blue sky moved flocks of small white clouds. The sun sparkled off millions of facets of sea surface, making Nils's eyes squint against the glitter. A low shore, featureless at first in the distance, drew gradually nearer, becoming low dunes backed by rolling heath. Woods of stubby oaks took form in some of the hollows. Nils Jarnhann had never seen the sea before, nor oak woods, and stood absorbing the beauty and novelty.

  A break appeared in the dunes and became the mouth of a stream that flowed out of the heath. A short distance up the stream, on its south side, a town became visible past the shoulder of a dune. A lookout called down from the mast, and the stroke strengthened as the oarsmen began a chant, for this was their homeplace.

  When the ship was tied to the wharf of oak timbers, the oarsmen became stevedores, and under the captain's direction began to unload the pine planks that made up their cargo. A movement caught the captain's eye and he turned to see his passenger approaching. The captain was a big man, but this fellow was bigger-more than a hundred and ninety centimeters tall, he judged, with muscles impressively thick and sinewy even to one accustomed to the sight of brawny oarsmen. His corded torso was bare and brown beneath the simple leather harness that supported his sword belt. Soft deerskin breeches were wrapped close around his calves by leather strips, and his callused feet were bare. A necklace of wolves' teeth hung on a thong across his thick chest and the skin of a wolf's head was laced onto his steel cap. Straw-colored braids hung to his shoulders. Obviously a warrior of the northmen, and a new one, the captain thought, noting the sparse soft beard and mustache so out of character with the physique.

  Nils addressed the captain. "Will you hire me to help unload cargo?"

  "When did warriors start hiring out as labor?" the captain asked.

  "When they have spent their last coin for passage and need something to eat."

  "All right. One krona when the cargo is all on the wharf, if you work well and make no quarrels. Otherwise, nothing, and the arrows of the town wardens if there is trouble." The captain believed in giving a man a chance and also in making things clear from the beginning. And fear wasn't a trait of his.

  He matched Nils with a thick-armed man of medium height, and without words they made a point of pride in carrying bigger loads than any other pair working. Even with the breeze, all of them were soon dripping sweat-a familiar and agreeable enough experience both to oarsmen and warrior. Soon Nils removed helmet, harness, and sword, laying them with his other things on a rowing bench forward.

  Well into the afternoon one of the crew suddenly shouted, "Hey! Stop!" A youth, who had boarded unnoticed, leaped from the gunwale carrying Nils's scabbarded sword. The captain, on the wharf supervising the piling, bellowed, drew his knife and threw it, but it clattered uselessly on the cobblestones. Nils's bare feet hit the wharf running. The thief was quick; he reached a corner and sprinted out of sight. A moment later Nils made the turn, and the thief realized he had dangerously underestimated both the weight of the sword and the speed of a barbarian who had spent much time running on skis. He drew the sword as he ran, then turned and faced his pursuer. Nils stopped a few meters from him, and seconds later several of the crew ran up, panting, to stand near.

  "I can stand here as long as you can," Nils pointed out matter-of-factly. "If you try to run away again with the sword, I will easily catch you. And if you run at me to kill me, you won't be able to. But if you lay the sword down and walk away, I'll let you go."

  The thief scowled and licked his lips nervously. He was Nils's age, lean and wiry. Suddenly he rushed at Nils, the sword raised to one side in both hands, ready to swing. The sailors scattered, and in that instant Nils sprang high above the swinging blade. A hard foot shot out, a powerful thigh driving the heel into the thief's chest and hurling him backward. He skidded on his back and lay still.

  "What must I do now?" Nils asked.

  "Is he dead?" asked the sailor that Nils had worked with.

  "He's dead all right," Nils assured him, without needing to examine the body.

  "Well then, there's nothing to do. A warden's likely to come around and question us, and we'll tell him what happened. He'll have the body taken away and that'll be the end of it. There won't be any trouble for you, if that's what you're wondering about."

  Nils and the sailor began walking back to the wharf.

  "And what about his clan?" Nils wondered.

  "What's a clan?"

  "A clan is, well… " Nils had never thought about this before. It was as natural a part of life as eating or breathing. "A clan is like the family, in a way, but much bigger, and the members fight for each other and take vengeance if need be."

  "In Denmark we don't have clans. Countrymen have lords. But townsmen and sailors are loyal mainly to their bellies."

  "And I won't be judged at a ting?"

  "Ting? I've never heard the word." The sailor paused. "Swordsman, let me give you
some advice. The world you've come to is a lot different from your barbarian backcountry. Its ways and even its speech are different. You and I can talk together partly because Danish and Swedish aren't so different in the first place, but also partly because we sailors are used to going to ports in Jotmark and adapting our speech for Swedish ears. But most Danes have never heard a Swede, and you won't find it so easy to talk to them at first. And if you travel farther, to the German lands for example, you won't understand their ways or anything they say. If you're going to travel in civilized lands, you'd better learn something about their customs; otherwise, even a man like you will find only hardship and death."

  The inn loomed two-stories high in the darkness and was made of planks instead of logs. The shutters were open, lighting the street in front of the windows and leaving nothing between the noise inside and the passersby outside. Nils had a krona in his pouch, strong hunger in his gut, and the sailor's words in the back of his mind as he moved lightly up the steps.

  The noise didn't stop as he crossed the room, but the volume dropped a few decibels and faces turned to look. The innkeeper stared a moment at the bizarre but dangerous-looking barbarian wearing a pack with a shield on it, a slung bow, and a sword. Then he walked over to him.

  "Do you want a bed, stranger?"

  The sailor had been right. Nils understood the question, but Danish speech was different. He might indeed have trouble understanding longer speech or making himself clear. At any rate, he would speak slowly.

  "No, only food," he said. "The ground will have to be my bed, or else I'll run out of money too soon."

  The innkeeper eyed him narrowly and leaned a stout forearm on the bar top. "You plan to sleep in the open, if I take your meaning." He too spoke slowly now. "In that case, more than your money may disappear; your life's blood also. If you don't know that, then the world is a dangerous place for you."