The Sea of Trolls - Farmer Nancy - Страница 22

The other berserkers, too, were careful around him, as though Jack could unleash lightning on their sorry hides. He would have loved to fry them with a thunderbolt, but he didn’t know how. I wish the Bard had taught me how to drive people crazy,Jack mused as Olaf droned on about the uses of sea ivory. I’d send them all over the side for the whales to gobble up.

“I want bread and honey,” said Lucy, who was curled up by Jack’s knee. She had learned the berserkers’ language even faster than he and used it to order them around. She sounded utterly confident, like a real princess. Only Jack knew the fragile shell that protected her sanity. Only he saw the signs that indicated her despair. Lucy’s face had become pinched and somehow older. Her voice had a shrillness that bordered on hysteria. “I want bread and honey now,” said Lucy.

Olaf laughed and untied the lid of a food basket. “And what will you do if I don’t fetch it?” he teased.

“I’ll tell my brother to make your beard fall off.”

“Be quiet,” Jack said in a low voice. He was terrified someone would ask him to work magic.

“Oho! I’m shaking in my boots,” said Olaf, handing her the desired treat.

“You’d better,” the little girl said. She licked the honey off and started to work on the rock-hard bread.

“Olaf,” Jack said hesitantly.

“You’rehungry too? You kids are worse than a pack of wolves.”

“I’m not hungry.” Jack wasn’t sure how to approach Olaf on this subject. Much of the time the man appeared friendly, but he was capable of great rages. “I was thinking…. You don’t need Lucy. I mean, she’s awfully little, and you’re going to get twice as much work out of me. Singing your praises and so on. Couldn’t you—couldn’t you let her go? I mean, drop her off at a monastery so she’d be taken care of.” Jack talked rapidly, for he could see Olaf’s face turning red. “I’d pay you back somehow. I don’t know how, but I’d do it. Please—”

The blow knocked him sideways into the bilge. Jack’s ears rang, but he knew Olaf had pulled his punch at the last minute. He’d just got another kitten scratch. A full-grown cat mauling would have sent him into the next world.

“Stop it! Stop it!” shrilled Lucy. “I forbid you to hurt my brother! You’re—you’re a rotten kindaskitur!” The curse took Olaf completely by surprise. He bellowed with laughter and swung the little girl around in a kind of dance. The boat swayed dangerously.

“So I’m a pile of sheep droppings, little Valkyrie. You must have been taking language lessons from Thorgil.” The giant plumped her down on a bundle of furs. Jack crawled to his feet. It had been worth a try, but he saw now that being a bard didn’t protect him from everything.

He rubbed the blood from his nose on his sleeve. He didn’t dare cry. Nothing disgusted the Northmen more than sniveling. Jack hugged himself to keep from shivering. He had to stay in control if they were ever to survive.

Presently, Olaf sat down to continue Jack’s lessons as though nothing had happened. “You have to learn the ways we speak of important things,” he said. “It’s not enough simply to say ‘ship’. That doesn’t show respect, and so we call it the ‘horse of the sea’ or ‘ocean’s chariot’. In the same way, a sword is not merely a sword, but a ‘serpent of battle’. That honors its ability to bite.”

“What’s wrong with her?” Jack said, interrupting what promised to be a long discussion. He’d been watching Thorgil. The girl had been slumped against the side of the ship for hours. She’d neither moved nor spoken.

The giant shaded his eyes as he looked toward the stern. “The brjostabarn? She’s unhappy because she didn’t fall in battle.”

“I don’t understand.”

“She didn’t die. She wasn’t killed.”

“Now I’m really confused,” said Jack, watching the drab, dirt-streaked face of the shield maiden.

“I told her, wait a while,” said Olaf. “We can’t all die the first time we go out. Sooner or later you’ll make it. But she didn’t listen. She’s always been inclined to gloom.”

“Why would anyone want to die?” cried Jack.

“It’s the only way to get into Valhalla. Surely you know that? But of course you’ve been raised a Christian.” Olaf then explained about the various heavens a Northman could try for. The best was Odin’s stronghold called Valhalla. There the best and brightest spent all day in ferocious battle, killing and being killed. At evening the dead rose and spent the night feasting and drinking with their murderers. The roast boar never ran out, the mead cups were always full. It was a wonderful place, but only those who had been slain in battle were allowed in.

“Some warriors, and women who have died bravely, are chosen by the goddess Freya to live in her world,” Olaf explained. “Personally, I’d find that boring. Freya is interested in love, so there’s no fighting there. You get to farm and train horses. The women spin and sew. It’s like ordinary life, only there’s no suffering.”

“Sounds all right to me,” said Jack.

“If you die at sea, you are taken into the halls of the god Aegir and his wife, Ran,” said Olaf. “That’s a fine place. The beer is good, the feasting excellent if you like fish. You get to sail in all kinds of weather, and you never have to worry about drowning because you’ve done that already. To be really welcome, you bring Ran a gift.”

“That’s why you passed out gold when we were about to sink,” said Jack.

“Very good! You were paying attention.” The giant beamed.

“But the captives didn’t get any.”

“Of course not. They’re only thralls.”

“So where do thralls go?” Jack asked.

“To Hel,” Olaf said simply.

Wouldn’t you know it?thought Jack. It wasn’t enough to take people captive and destroy their lives. The berserkers had to mess up their afterlife as well. Not that Jack believed he would go to one of Olaf’s heavens. The Bard said people wound up with the afterlife they expected, so it was important to have a good one. He said heintended to retire to the Islands of the Blessed with the ancient kings and queens of Ireland.

The giant had stopped speaking. He gazed out at the ocean, his blue eyes soft with admiration. It was a fine day, with waves neither too large nor too small and with a following wind. The great sail bellied out over a ship loaded to the gunwales with booty.

Jack saw that Lucy had fallen asleep with a half-gnawed crust of bread in her hand. He got up and covered her with a fur. Then he stood brooding over the deep water, wishing he’d never seen Olaf and his evil crew. At the same time the rushing waves stirred something deep in Jack’s soul. His lungs filled with a cold, bracing wind. It was a great thing to be alive. The world was a beautiful place even if you were a thrall. The sun was as warm and the air as sweet to you as it was to Thorgil. Better, probably, to go by her sour face.

“Father talked a lot about Hell,” Jack said after a while. “You got there by being wicked.”

“Hel is a monster, not a place,” corrected Olaf. “She claims cowards, oath-breakers, and people without honor. Her fortress, the World of Ice, is filled with mist and darkness. It’s forever cold. The silence is broken only by the slither of snakes.”

“Our Hell is hot, but I suppose it doesn’t matter,” said Jack. “It’s a nasty place for people you don’t like. I still don’t understand why Thorgil wants to die.”

“You haven’t been listening,” said Olaf. “Warriors haveto fall in battle. If they die of sickness or old age like any sheep-herder, they’re deemed cowards and wind up in Hel’s fortress with the thralls. Thorgil has set her heart on Valhalla. She will not be happy until she gets there.”

Olaf sent Jack to bail out the ship. This was a constant chore and one the Northmen shared now that they had no adult slaves. Jack toiled alongside Eric Pretty-Face, whose bulging arms could lift five times as much water as he. Eric whistled a tuneless song through broken teeth. One of his legs was ravaged by what looked like an enormous bite.