The Boat of a Million Years

1

It is told in the saga of Olaf Tryggvason how Nornagest came to him when he was at Nidharos and abode some while in the king’s hall; for many and wonderful were the tales that Gest bore. Evening after lengthening evening as the year drew toward winter, men sat by the fires and hearkened. Tales they heard from lifetimes agone and the far ends of the world. Often he gave them staves as well, for he was a skald, and was apt to strum a harp underneath the words, in English wise. There were those who muttered he must be a liar, asking how any man could have fared so widely or been so old. But King Olaf bade these be still, and himself listened keenly.

“I was living on a farm in the Uplands,” Gest had said to him. “Now my last child yonder has died, and again I am weary of my dwelling—wearier than ever, lord. Word of you reached me, and I have come to see whether it is true.”

“What you have heard that is good, is true,” answered the priest Conor. “By God’s grace, he is bringing a new day to Norway.”

“But your day first broke very long ago, Gest, did it not?” murmured Olaf. “We have heard of you again and again. Everyone has—though none but your neighbors in the mountains have seen you for many years, and I supposed you must be dead.” When he looked at the newcomer he saw a man tall and lean, straight in the back, gray of hair and beard but with few lines across the strong bones of his face. “You are not really aged after all.”

Gest sighed. “I am older than I seem, lord.”

“Guest of the Noras. A strange and heathenish nick-name, that,” said the king slowly. “How did you come by it?”

“You may not want to hear.” And Gest turned the talk elsewhere.

Right well did he understand the craft of doing so. Over and over, Olaf urged him to take baptism and be saved. Yet the king did not make threats or order death, as he did with most who were stubborn about this. Gest’s tales were so gripping that he wanted to keep the wanderer here.

Conor pressed harder, seeking Gest out almost daily. The priest was eager in the holy work. He had come with Olaf when the latter sailed from Dublin to Norway, overthrew Hdkon Jarl, and won the land for himself. Now the king was calling in missionaries from England and Germany as well as Ireland, and maybe Conor felt a bit left out.

Gest gave him grave heed and soft answers. “I am no stranger to your Christ,” Gest said. “I have met him often, or at least his worshippers. Nor am I plighted to Odin and Thor.” His smile was rueful. “I have known too many different gods.”

“But this is the true and only God,” Conor replied. “Hang not back, or you will be lost. In just a few years a full thousand will have passed since his birth among men. Belike he will come back then, end the world, and raise the dead for judgment.”

Gest stared afar. “It would be good to believe I can meet my dead anew,” he whispered; and he let Conor talk on.

At eventide, however, after meat, when the trestle tables had been taken from the hall and women carried the drinking horns forth, he had other things to talk about, yarns to spin, verses to chant, questions to meet. Once a couple of guardsmen happened to speak of the great battle at Bravellir. “My forebear Grani from Bryndal was among the Icelanders who fought for King Sigurdh Ring,” one boasted. “He cut his way close enough to see King Harald War-Tooth fall. Starkadh himself had not strength to save the Danes that day.”

Gest stirred. “Forgive me,” he said. “There were no Icelanders at Bravellir. Norsemen hadjiot yet found that island.”

The warrior bristled. “Have you never heard the lay that Starkadh made?” he flung back. “It names all the worthies who came to the fray on either side.”

Gest shook his head. “I have heard, and I do not call you a liar, Eyvind. You passed on what you were told. But Starkadh never made any such lay. Another skald did, lifetimes afterward, and put it in his mouth. Bravellir was bloodied—“ He sat a few heartbeats thinking, while the fires in the trenches guttered and crackled. “Was it three hundred years ago? I have lost track.”

“Do you mean Starkadh was not there, and you were?” gibed the guardsman.

“Oh, he was,” said Gest, “though he was not much like the stories men tell of him now, nor lamed and half blind with age when at last he went to his death.”

Stillness fell anew. King Olaf peered through shifting shadows at the speaker before he asked low, “Did you, then, know him?”

Gest nodded. “I did. Indeed, it was right after Bravellir that we met.”

2

His staff was a spear, for no man traveled unarmed in the North; but over the small pack on his back hung a harp in its case, and he offered harm to none. When at nightfall he found a homestead, he slept there, repaying hospitality with songs and tales and news from outside. Otherwise he rolled up in his cloak, and by dawnlight drank from a spring or brook and ate of whatever bread and cheese his latest host had given him. Thus had he fared through most of his years, from end to end of the world.

This day was cool beneath a wan sky where clouds were scant and the sun swung southward. The woods that decked the hills of Gautland stood hazed and hushed. Birches had begun to turn yellow, and the green of oak and beech was less bright than erstwhile. Firs lifted darkling among them. Ripe currants glowed hi the shade. Smells of earth and damp filled every breath.

Gest saw it all, widely, from a ridge he had climbed. Below him the land rolled off to an unclear edge of sight. Mostly it was tree-clad, but meadows and plowed fields broke it here and there. He spied two houses and their outbuildings, distance-dwindled; smoke rose straight upward from the roofs. Close by, a stream glistened on its way to a lake that shone in the offing.

He had come far enough from the battlefield that the wreckage and the dead strewn across it were blurred together in his eyes. Carrion birds swarmed aloft and about and back down, a whirling blackness, but also gone tiny for him. He could barely hear their cries. Sometimes the howl of a wolf lifted, to hang above the hills for what seemed a long while before dying away in echoes.

Living men had withdrawn, bound home. They took wounded kindred and friends along, but could merely throw a little earth over such of the fallen as they knew. A band of them whom Gest had come upon this morning did tell him that King Sigurdh had borne off the body of his foe King Harald, to give it a barrow and grave goods at Uppsala for the sake of his own honor.

Gest leaned on his spear, shook his head, and smiled sadly. How often had he beheld the like of this, after young men stormed forth to cast their lives from them? He did not know. He had lost the number somewhere in the waste of the centuries. Or else he had never had the heart to try keeping count. He was not sure which, any more. Yet as always, he felt the need to say a farewell, the only thing he or anyone else could now give the young men.

It was no skaldic drapa that came to his lips. The words were Northern, so that the dead would understand if they could hear, but he lacked all wish to praise bravery and recall mighty deeds. The verse form that he chose was from a country thousands of miles toward the sunrise. There a short, slanty-eyed folk knew much and fashioned things of wondrous beauty, though there too the sword ranged free.

“The summer fading, Chill shall slash the leaves bloody And the geese trek—where? Already this ground went red While the wind called souls away.”

A brief spell more Gest lingered, then turned and departed. Those Danes he met earlier had seen the one whom he sought leave soon after half a dozen Swedes did and follow them eastward. Thereupon Gest had gone to Bravellir and cast about until his woodsman’s eye lighted on what he thought must be the tracks. He had better hurry. Nonetheless he kept to his everyday stride. It looked lazy, but in the course of a day it left as much behind it as a horse might, or more; and it let him stay aware of everything around him.

He was on a game trail. The kings had set Bravellir as their meeting place because it was a broad meadow through which a road ran north and south, about halfway between Harald in Scania and Sigurdh in Sweden. However, the land round about was thinly settled. The six going this way must be headed for the Baltic shore, where lay the ship or ships that had brought them. That they were so few bespoke how terrible the battle had been. It would be remembered, sung about, made even larger in the minds of men, for hundreds of years to come. And those who plowed yonder fields would molder forgotten.

Gest’s shoes scuffed softly on soil. Branches were a roof overhead, through which sunbeams fell to make spatters of light on the shadowy hallway before him. A squirrel ran like a flame up a tree. Somewhere a dove moaned. Brush rustled on the left, a great dim shape slipped off, an elk. Gest let his soul drift into the sweet-smelling reaches. Meanwhile, though, he kept reading the traces. That was easy, footprints, broken twigs, torn spiderwebs, marks on mossy logs where men had sat down to rest. They were no hunters by trade, as he had been through much of his life. Nor was the one who followed them, never stopping, closing the gap between. Those feet were huge.

Time passed. The sunbeams lowered, lengthened, took on a golden hue. A bit of cold crept into the air.

Suddenly Gest halted. He leaned forward, head cocked, listening. Family to him came a noise he thought he knew.

He quickened his pace to a lope. Muffled at first by leaves, the sound swelled fast, clang and clatter, shouts, soon crackling, snapping, and harsh breath. Gest brought his spear to the ready and glided on as quietly as might be.

A slain man sprawled across the trail. He had fallen into a bush that snagged the upper half of him. Blood dripped from its stems and pooled below, screamingly bright. A blow had cloven him from the left shoulder through the breastbone. Pieces of rib and lung poked out of him. Fair hair clung sweat-matted to cheeks whereon no beard grew, just the down of a boy. He stared and gaped emptily.

Gest drew aside and found himself treading on another body, dose by, brush churned with combat. He glimpsed men, iron, blood and more blood. Weapon banged on weapon, scraped across helmets, thudded against wooden shields. Another fighter toppled. A thigh spouted red; he threshed about and shrieked. It was the kind of noise a human throat ought not to make. A fourth warrior dropped and lay sodden in a patch of nettles. The head was nearly off him.

Gest got behind a young fir. It screened him, and he could see between its limbs. Two were left of the band that the newcomer had overtaken and attacked. Like their mates, they wore only sarks, coats, breeks. If any owned mail, he had not thought to put it on until too late. Both these did have kettle hats. One carried sword and shield, one an ax.

Their lone foe was fully outfitted, in knee-length byrnie, conical helmet with noseguard, an iron-rimmed shield hi his left grip and a sword of uncommon size in his right. He was more than big, overtopping Gest’s goodly height by a head, shoulders as wide as a doorframe, arms and legs like oak boughs. An unkempt black beard reached to his chest.

The pair had recovered from the shock of his onslaught. They worked together, barking words to and fro. The swordsman went straight at the giant. Blades clashed, agleam when they rose into a sunbeam, a blur as they hissed downward or sideways. The Swede caught a blow on his shield that made him lurch, but stood fast and struck back. The axman circled behind their enemy.

The huge man must have known it. Blindingly fast, he spun on his heel and plunged at the axman, offside, so that the stroke missed him by inches. His blade whipped. The axman staggered, dropped his weapon, stared at a right forearm laid open and bone-shattered. The giant leaped on past him. There was a grassy patch between him and the other swordsman. At its end he turned and burst into a run at that fellow. Shields boomed together, with weight and speed behind his. Overborne, the Swede went on his back. Somehow he kept hold of his sword and got his shield up.

The giant sprang high and landed on him. Shield was driven against ribs. Gest thought he heard them crack. Breath whoofed out. The giant straddled the writhing body and made his kill in two strokes.

He glared around. The wounded axman was in flight, blundering off among the boles. The winner dashed after and cut him down.

The shrieks of the thigh-slashed man ebbed off to cawing, to rattling, to silence.

Laughter boomed from a cavern of a breast. The huge man rammed his blade thrice into the earth, wiped it clean on the shirt of a fallen, and sheathed it. His breathing eased. He doffed helmet and coif, dropped them, swept a hairy hand over the sweat that tunneled off his brow.

Gest came out from behind the fir. The giant snatched at his hilt. Gest leaned spear in the crotch of a tree and spread his palms, “I am peaceful,” he said.

The warrior stayed taut. “But are you alone?” he asked. His voice was like heavy surf on a strand of stones.

Gest looked into the rugged face, the small ice-blue eyes, and nodded. “I am. Besides, after what I have just seen, I would not think Starkadh need be wary of anyone or anything.”

The warrior grinned. “Ah, you know me. But we have not met erenow.”

“Everybody in the North has heard of Starkadh the Strong. And ... I have been in search of you.”

“You have?” Surprise turned into a glower. “Then it was a nithing’s trick to stand aside and give me no help.”

“You had no need,” said Gest in his mildest tone. “Also, the battle went so fast. Never have I seen such weapon-wielding.”

Pleased, Starkadh spoke friendlier. “Who are you that seek me?”

“I have borne many names. In the North it has oftenest been Gest.”

“What would you of me?”

“That is a long tale. May I first ask why you hounded these men down and slew them?”

Starkadh’s gaze went elsewhere, toward the sun whose light shot in yellow beams between trees turning dark against heaven. His lips moved. After a bit he nodded, met Gest’s look again, and said:

“Here shall wolves not hunger. Haraldfed the ravens. Honor won we. Only Odin overcame us. Ale I lack, but offer All these foes to Harold. Never was he niggard. Now I’ve shown I’m thankful.”

So it was true what they said, Gest thought. As well as being the foremost of warriors, Starkadh had some gift as a skald. What else might he be?

“I see,” Gest acknowledged slowly. “You fought for Harald, and wished to avenge your lord after he fell, though the war be done with.”

Starkadh nodded. “I hope I have gladdened his ghost. Still more do I hope I have gladdened his forebear King Frodhi, who was the best of lords and never stinted me of gold or weapons or other fine things.”

A tingle went through Gest, a chill along his backbone. “Was that Frodhi Fridhleifsson in Denmark? They say Starkadh was of his household. But he died lifetimes ago.”

“I am older than I seem,” answered Starkadh with renewed roughness. He shook himself. “After this day’s work, thirst is afire in me. Would you know where there is water?”

“I know how to find water, if you will come with me,” Gest told him. “But what of these dead men?”

Starkadh shrugged. “I’m no scaldcrow to pick them clean. Leave them for the ants.” Flies buzzed around blind eyes, parched tongues, clotting blood. Stenches hung heavy.

Gest had grown used to such sights, but he was ever happy to lay them behind him, and tried not dwell on thoughts of widows, children, mothers. The lives he had shared were short at best, the merest blink of years, and afterward, for most, a span hardly longer before they were wholly forgotten by all but him. He took his spear and led the way down the trail.

“Will you be returning to Denmark?” he asked.

“I think not,” rumbled Starkadh at his back. “Sigurdh will make sure the next king in Hleidhra is beholden to him, and that the under-kings are at odds with each other.”

“Chances for a fighting man.”

“But I’d mislike watching the realm fall asunder that Frodhi built and Harald War-Tooth rebuilt.”

Gest sighed. “From what I have heard, the seed of something great died at Bravellir. What will you do?”

“Take ships that I own, gather crews for them, and go in viking—eastward to Wendland and Gardhariki, I think. Is that a harp you bear above your pack?”

Gest nodded. “I’ve put my hand to sundry kinds of work, but mainly I am a skald.”

“Then come with me. When we reach a lord’s hall, make a drapa about what I wrought this day. I’ll reward you well.”

“We must talk about that.”

Silence fell between them. After a while Gest saw the signs he had been awaiting and took a side trail. It opened on a glade starred with clover. A spring bubbled up at the middle; water trickled off through the grass, to lose itself under the trees. They made a wall around, dark beneath, still golden-green on top where the last sunbeams touched them. The eastern sky was violet-blue. A flight of rooks winged homeward.

Starkadh cast himself belly down and drank with mighty slurps. When at length he raised his dripping beard, he saw Gest busy. The wanderer had lain down his cloak, opened his pack, spread things out. Now he gathered deadwood below the trees and bushes that surrounded the glade. “What are you doing?” Starkadh asked.

“Making ready for night,” Gest told him.

“Does nobody dwell nearby? A swineherd’s hut would do.”

“I know not, and belike darkness would overrun us while we searched. Besides, here is better rest than on a dirt floor breathing smoke and farts.”

“Oh, I’ve slept under the stars often enough, and gone hungry too. I see you’ve a little food with you. Will you share?”

Gest gave the warrior a close look. “You’d not simply take it from me?”

“No, no, you are neither foeman nor quite a stranger.” Starkadh laughed. “Nor a woman. Too bad.”

Gest smiled. “We’ll halve what there is, though it’s not much for a man your size. I’ll set snares. By morning, with luck, we’ll have voles to cook, or even a squirrel or hedgehog.” He paused. “Would you like to help me? If you’ll work as I show you, we can make ourselves snug before nightfall.”

Starkadh rose. “Do you think me a coalbiter? Of course I’ll take a hand. Are you a Finn, or have you dwelt among Finns, to know these woodsrunner’s tricks?”

“No, I was born in Denmark like you—a long time ago. But I learned the hunter’s craft in my boyhood.”

Gest found, unsurprised, that he must pick his words with care when giving orders. Starkadh’s haughtiness was likely to flare. Once he roared, “Am I a thrall?” and half drew blade. He resheathed it, smacked fist into palm, and did as he was bidden. For that moment, pain had twisted his face.

Daylight drained from the west. More and more stars glittered forth. When dusk had seeped upward to fill the glade, the men had their camp ready. A brushwood shelter, bracken and boughs heaped within, would allow rest free of dew, night mists, and rain if any fell. Turfs piled outside its mouth cast back into it the warmth of a fire that Gest had kindled with a drill. Besides nuts and berries, he had found pine cones, sedges, and roots to eke out the bread and cheese. After he had roasted them in the ways that were needful, he and Starkadh would bed down fairly full.

He hunkered at the fire, with his knife whittling a green stick into part of a cooking tool. It was a fire more low than the warrior would have built, softly sputtering, its slight smoke savory of resin. Though air cooled fast at this season, Starkadh learned he could stay comfortable by sitting close. The red and yellow flames cast wavery light over Gest’s cheekbones and nose; it glinted from his eyes and made shadows in the gray beard. “These are good skills you own,” Starkadh said. “Indeed you shall fare with me.”

“We will talk of that,” Gest answered, watching his work.

“Why? You told me you were in search of me.”

“Yes, I was.” Gest drew breath. “Long and long had I been away, until at last memories of the North overwhelmed me and I must come back to see if the aspens still quivered in the light nights of midsummer.” He did not speak of a woman who died after he and she fared thirty years together over the vast plains of the East with her herder tribesfolk. “I had lost hope in my quest, I had stopped seeking—until as I walked through the woods and over the heaths of Jutland and the old tongue reawakened in me, not too much changed since I left, I began to hear about Starkadh. Him I must meet! I followed word of him to Hleidhra, where they said he had gone across the Sound to join King Harald and thence onward to war. I followed that trail to Bravellir, and reached it at sunset when the day’s slaughter had ended. In the morning I found men who had seen him go from it, and I took the way they pointed, and here we are, Starkadh.”

The huge man shifted about. “What would you of me?” he growled uneasily.

“First I would ask for the tale of your life. Some of the stories I heard were wild.”

“You’re a news-greedy one.”

“I have sought knowledge throughout the world. M-m-m ... how shall a storyteller repay a night’s lodging or a skald make staves for chieftains, unless he have something word-worthy behind his teeth?”

Starkadh had unbuckled his sword, but dropped hand to knife. “Is this the beginning of witchcraft? Uncanny are you, Gest.”

The wanderer locked gaze with the warrior and answered, “I swear to cast no spell. What I am after is more strange than that.”

Starkadh quelled a shiver. As if charging at fear to trample it underfoot, he said in a rush: “What I have done is well known, though belike no man save me knows all of it. But sooth it is, wild and sometimes ugly tales have mushroomed over the years. I am not of Jotun birth. That’s old wives’ chatter. My father was a yeoman in the north of Zealand, my mother came of honest fisher folk, and they had other children who grew up, lived like anybody else, grew fold, and were laid in howe, those that battle or sickness or the sea had spared—also like anybody else.”

“How long have they lain in the earth?” Gest asked softly.

Starkadh ignored the question. “I was big and strong, as you see. From childhood I lacked wish to muck and plow the fields or haul nets full of stinking fish. Twelve years old, I went off in viking. Some neighborhood men had a ship in common. They met with other ships and harried a while along the Norse shores. When they went back for hay harvest, I stayed behind. I sought out a skipper who was going to stay the winter; and thereafter my fame waxed fast.

“Shall I tell you of battles, reavings, burnings, feasts, hunger, cold, shipmates, women, offerings to the gods, strife against storm and bad luck when the gods grew angry with us, kings we served and kings we overthrew? The years lie jumbled and awash in me like flotsam on a skerry.

“Frodhi, king at Hleidhra, took me in after I suffered shipwreck. He made me the head of his household troops, and I made him the greatest of lords in his day. But his son Ingjald proved a weakling, sluggard, glutton. I upbraided him and quit the land in disgust. Yet from time to time I have been back and wielded blade for worthier men of the Skjoldung house. Harald was the best of them, he became first among kings through all of Denmark and Gautland and well into Sweden; but now Harald is fallen, and his work broken, and I am alone again.”

He cleared his throat and spat. That may have been his way of not weeping.

“They told me Harald was aged,” Gest said. “He must ride to Bravellir in a wagon, and was well-nigh blind.”

“He died like a man!”

Gest nodded and spoke no further, but busied himself with the food. They ate wordlessly. Afterward they slaked their thirst anew at the spring and went aside, left and right, to piss. When Starkadh came back to the fire he found Gest already there, squatting on his haunches. The night was wholly upon them. Thor’s Wain gleamed enormous, barely over treetops, the North Star higher like a spearpoint.

Starkadh loomed above the fire, legs astraddle, fists on hips, and nearly snarled, “Too long have you slyly fended me off, you. What do you want? Out with it, or I’ll hew you down.”

Gest looked up. The light slipped to and fro along the shadows in his face. “A last question,” he said. “Then you shall know. When were you born, Starkadh?”

The giant coughed forth a curse. “You ask and ask and ask, and naught do you give! What kind of being are you? You sit on your hams like a Finnish warlock.”

Gest shook his head. “I learned this much farther east,” he replied mildly, “and many things else, but none of them are wizardry.”

“You learned womanishness, you who took care to arrive late at the battlefield and stood by while I fought six men!”

Gest rose, straightened his back, stared across the flames, and said in a voice like steel sliding from sheath: “That was no war of mine, nor would I have hunted men who boded me no further harm.” In the dim and restless light, under the stars and Winter Road, suddenly he seemed of a tallness with the warrior, or in some way taller still. “A thing I heard said about you is that though you be foremost in battle, you are doomed to do ill deeds, nithing’s work, over and over and over. They say Thor laid this on you because he hates you. They say the god who bears you good will is Odin, father of witchcraft. Could this be true?”

The giant gasped. It was as if he shrank back. He raised hands and thrust at air. “Empty talk,” he groaned. “Naught more.”

Gest’s words tramped against him. “But you have done treacheries. How many, in those lifetimes that have been yours?”

“Hold your jaw!” Starkadh bellowed. “What know you of being ageless? Be still, ere I smite you like the dayfly you are!”

“That might not be so easy,” Gest purred. “I too have lived a long rime. Far longer than you, my friend.”

The breath rattled in Starkadh’s throat. He could merely gape.

Gest’s tone went dry. “Well, nobody in these parts would keep count of years, as they do in the South or the East. What I heard was that you have lived three men’s lifetimes. That must mean simply that folk remember their grandfathers telling of you. A hundred years is a good enough guess.”

“I—have thought—it was more.”

Again Gest’s eyes caught Starkadh’s and held them. His voice softened but bleakened, trembled the least bit, like a night breeze. “I know not myself how old I am. But when I was a boy, they did not yet ken metal in these lands. Of stone did we make our knives, our axheads and spearheads and arrowheads, our burial chambers. It was not Jotuns who raised those dolmens that brood over the land. It was us, your own forebears, laying our dead to rest and offering to our gods. Though ‘we’ are no more. I have outlived them, I alone, as I have outlived all the generations of men after— until today, Starkadh.”

“You have grayed,” said the warrior in a kind of sob, as if that could be a denial.

“I went gray in my young manhood. Some do, you know. Otherwise I have not changed. I have never been sick, and wounds heal swiftly, without scars. When my teeth wear out, new ones grow. Is it the same for you?”

Starkadh gulped and nodded.

“Belike you’ve taken more hurts than me, such a life as you’ve led,” said Gest thoughtfully. “Myself, I’ve been as peaceful as men let me be, and as careful as a roamer may. When the charioteers rolled into what these days we call Denmark—“ He scowled. “That is forgotten, their wars and their deeds and their very speech. Wisdom lasts. It is what I have sought across the world.”

Starkadh shuddered. “Gest,” he mumbled. “I remember now, in my own youth there went tales of a wayfarer who— Nomagest. Are you he? I thought be was but a story.”

“Often have I left the North for hundreds of years. Always it called me home again. My last stay here ended maybe fourscore years ago. Less of an absence than formerly, but—“ Once more Gest sighed. “I feel myself grow ever wearier of roving the earth among the winds. So folk remembered me for a while, did they?”

Starkadh shook his head dazedly. “And to think that I, I was alive then. But I must have been faring about. ... Is it true that the Norns told your mother you would die when a candle burned down, and she snuffed it out and you carry it still?”

Gest grinned. “Do you yourself believe you have your lifespan from Odin?”

He turned grave: “I know not what has made us twain what we are. That is a riddle as dark as the death of all other mankind. Norns or gods in truth? The hunger to know drove me to the far ends of the world, that and the hope of finding more tike myself. Oh, seeing a beloved wife wither into the grave, and seeing our children follow her— But nowhere did I come on any else whom time spares, nor did I come on any answer. Rather, I heard too many answers, I met too many gods. Abroad they call on Christ, but if you fare southward long enough it is Muhammad; and eastward it is Gautama Buddha, save where they say the world is a dream of Brahm, or offer to a host of gods and ghosts and elves like ours hi these Northlands, And almost every man I asked told me that His folk know the truth while the rest are benighted. Could I but hear a word I felt even half sure of—”

“Fret not yourself about that,” said Starkadh, boldness rising anew in him. “Things are whatever they are, and no man shuns his doom. His freedom is to leave a high name behind him.”

“I wondered if I was altogether alone, and my deathlessness a curse laid on me for some horrible guilt I have forgotten,” Gest went on. “That seemed wrong, though. Strange births do happen. Oftenest they are weak or crippled, but now and then something springs up that can flourish, like a clover with four leaves. Could we ageless be such? We would be very few. Most could well die of war or mischance before discovering they are different. Others could well be slain by neighbors who come to fear they are witches. Or they may flee, take new names, learn how to hide what they are. I have mostly done this, seldom abiding at length in any single place. Once in a while I have met folk who were willing to take me for what I am—wise men in the East, or raw backwoods dwellers like my Northerners—but in the end there was always too much sorrow, too heavy a freight of memories, and I must leave them also.

“Never did I find my own sort. Many and many a trail did I follow, sometimes for years, but each led to naught. At last hope faded out of me, and I turned my footsteps homeward. At least the Northern springtime is forever young.

“And then I heard about you.”

Gest came around the fire. He reached to lay hands on Starkadh’s shoulders. “Here my quest ends, where it began,” he said. Tears trembled on his lashes. “Now we are two, no more alone. And by this we know there must be more, women among them. Together, helping and heartening each other, we can search till we begin to find. Starkadh, my brother!”

The warrior stood unmoving before he said, “This ... comes ... suddenly.”

Gest let go. “It does that. I’ve had the whole while to think since the first word I got about you. Well, take your time. We have more time than most men, you and I.”

Starkadh stared off into the dark. “I thought someday I must grow old and strengthless like Harald,” he breathed. “Unless first I fell in battle, and I thought I would see to it that I did ... But you tell me I shall always be young. Always.”

“A load that on me has often felt well-nigh unbearable,” Gest told him. “Shared, though, it will be light.”

Starkadh clenched oak-burl fists. “What shall we do with it?”

“Ward the gift well. It may, after all, be from Beyond, and those who bear it singled out for deeds that will change the world.”

“Yes.” Glee began to throb in Starkadh’s voice. “Fame undying, and I alive to enjoy it. War-hosts to rally round me, kingdoms to take, royal houses to found.”

“Hold, hold,” said Gest. “We’re not gods, you know. We can be slain, drowned, burned, starved like any other men. I’ve stayed on earth these uncounted years by ganging warily.”

Starkadh gave him a cold look. Scorn snorted: “I understand that. Do you understand honor?”

“I don’t mean we should skulk. Let us make sure of our safety, both in strength and in boltholes, lest luck go awry. After that we can make known what we are, piece by piece, to such folk as we can trust. Then- awe of us will help, but that is not enough; to lead, we must serve, we must give.”

“How can we give unless we have gold, treasures, a hoard such as deathless vikings can heap up?”

Gest frowned. “We draw near to quarreling. Best we speak no further tonight, but sleep on it. Tomorrow, refreshed, we’ll think more clearly.”

“You can sleep—after this?”

“What, are you not worn out?”

Starkadh laughed. “After reaping a goodly harvest.” He failed to see how Gest winced. “As you wish. To bed.”

However, in the shelter he thrashed and muttered and flung his arms around. Finally Gest slipped back outside.

He found a dry spot close to the spring, but decided he would take his rest in meditation rather than sleep. Having assumed the lotus position, he raised calm within himself. That came easily. He had far surpassed his gurus in lands east of the sunrises over Denmark: for he had had centuries to practice the disciplines of mind and body that they taught. Yet without those teachings, he doubted he could have endured his lot. How fared those masters, those fellow chetas? Had Nadha or Lobsang at last won free of the Wheel?

Would he ever? Hope bound him. He could never quite bring himself to loosen it. Did that mean he spurned the faith? “Om mani padme hum.” No such words had seized him by the soul; but was that because he would not let them? Could he only find a God to Whom he could yield —

At least he had become like the sages in control of the body and its passions. Rather, in this he had won to the power for which they had striven. Breath and heartbeat dwindled at his command until he was unaware of them. Chill ceased to be a thing invading his skin; he was of it, he was the night world, he became the stave that unfolded.

A noise recalled him. Hours had passed. The east stood gray above the trees. Dew spread the only brightness in a hueless half-light. Mists smoked above it and along men’s breath. The clear gurgle of the spring sounded much louder than it was.

Starkadh hunched at the shelter. He had knocked it apart, blundering out. He carried the sheathed sword that had lain across his doffed mail. A bloodshot and darkrimmed gaze jumped about until it landed on Gest. He grunted and stalked that way.

Gest rose. “Good morning,” he greeted.

“Did you spend the night sitting?” Starkadh wondered. His voice grated. “Sleep fled me too.”

“I hope you got some rest anyway. I’ll go see what’s in the snares.”

“Wait. Ere I take more at your hands—”

Cold pierced Gest from within. “What’s wrong?”

“You. Your slippery tongue. I tossed as in a nightmare, righting to grasp what you meant yesterday. Now you’ll make it plain to me.”

“Why, I thought I did. We are two ageless men. Our loneliness is at an end. But there must be others, women among them, for us to find and ... and hold dear. For this, we’ll swear oaths, become brothers—”

“Of what kind?” rasped Starkadh. “I the chieftain, later the king; you my skald and redesman— But that’s not what you said!” He swallowed. “Or do you also want to be a king?” Brightening: “Surely! We can divide the world between us.”

“We would die trying.”

“Our fame will never die.”

“Or worse, we would fall out with each other. How shall two stay together when always they deal in death and betrayal?”

At once Gest saw his mistake. He had intended to say that such was the nature of power. Seizing it and holding it were alike filthy. But before he could go on, Starkadh clapped hand to hilt. The rocky face went dawn-pale. “So you besmirch my honor,” he said from the bottom of his gullet.

Gest lifted a hand, palm outward. “No. Let me explain.”

Starkadh leaned close. His nostrils flared. “What have you heard about me? Spew it out!”

Gest knew starkly that he must. “They tell how you took one small king captive and hanged him for an offering to Odin, after you had promised him his life. They tell how you murdered another in his bath house, for pay. But—”

“I had to!” Starkadh yelled. “Ever was I an outsider. The rest were, were too young, and—“ He uttered a bawl like an aurochs bull’s.

“And your loneliness lashed you till you struck back, blindly,” Gest said. “I understand. I did when first I heard about you. How often have I felt thus? I remember deeds of mine that hurt me worse than fire. It’s merely that I am not a killer.”

Starkadh spat on the ground. “Right. You’ve hugged your years to you like a crone wrapping herself in her blanket.”

“But don’t you see,” Gest cried, “things have changed for us both? Now we’ve better work to do than attack folk who never harmed us. It was the lust for fame, wealth, power that brought you to dishonor.”

Starkadh screamed. His sword flew free. He hewed.

Gest shifted like a shadow. Nonetheless the edge ripped down his left arm. Blood poured forth, drenched the cloth, dripped into the streamlet that ran from the spring.

He drifted back, drew his knife, halted hi half a crouch. Starkadh stood fast. “I should ... chop you in twain ... for what you said,” he panted. Gulping air: “But I think you will die soon enough of that stroke.” Laughter clanked. “A shame. I did hope you’d be a friend. The first real friend of my life. Well, the Norns will it otherwise.”

Our natures do, Gest thought. And: How easily I could kill you. How open you stand to a hundred martial tricks I know.

“Instead, I shall have to go on as erstwhile,” said Starkadh, “alone.”

Let it be so, thought Gest.

With the fingers of his right hand he searched below his torn shirt and pushed together the lips of his wound. Pain he made into something apart from himself, like the mists that broke under the strengthening light. He gave his mind to the blood flow.

Starkadh kicked the shelter aside, fetched his mail, drew it over the underpadding in which he had spent the night. He donned coif and helmet, belted on sword, picked up shield. When he was ready to leave, he stared in astonishment at the other man. “What, are you still on your feet?” he said. “Shall I make an end of you?”

Had he tried that, it would have been the end of him. But he stopped, shivered, turned away. “No,” he mumbled. “This is all too spooky. I’m off to my own doom, Nornagest.”

He lumbered up the trail, into the woods and beyond sight.

Then Gest could sit down and bring a whole heed to the steering of his body. He had stopped the bleeding before he suffered overmuch loss, though he would be weak for a few days. No matter. He could stay here until he was fit to travel; the earth would provide for him. He began to hasten the knitting of the flesh.

He dared not wish he were able to heal the wound inside.

3

“However, we only met fleetingly, Starkadh and I,” Gest went on. “Afterward hearsay about him reached me now and then, until I went abroad again; and when I came back he was long dead, slain as he had wanted.”

“Why have you fared so widely?” asked King Olaf. “What have you sought?”

“What I never found,” Gest answered. “Peace.”

No, that was not wholly right, he thought. Over and over had he been at peace, in the nearness of beauty or wisdom, the arms of a woman, the laughter of children. But how short the whiles! His latest time as a husbandman, in the Uplands of Norway, seemed already the dream of a single night: Ingridh’s youthful gladness, its rebirths in the cradle he had carved, her heart that stayed high while she grew more gray than he, but then the shriveling years, and afterward the burials, the burials. Where now wandered Ingridh? He could not follow, not her nor any of those who glimmered on the rim of memory, not that first and sweetest of all, garlanded with ivy and in her hand a blade of flint...

“In God is peace,” said the priest.

It could be, it could be. Today church bells rang in Norway, as they had done for a lifetime or more in Denmark, yes, above that halidom of the Mother where he and the garland girl had offered flowers ... He bad seen the charioteers and their storm gods come into the land, he had seen bronze and iron, the wagon trains bound south for Rome and the viking ships bound west for England, sickness and famine, drought and war, and life patiently beginning anew; each year went down into death and awaited the homecoming of the sun that would bring it to rebirth; be too could let go if he would, and drift away on the wind with the leaves.

King Olaf’s priest thought that soon every quest would end and the dead arise. How good if that was true. Ever more folk believed so. Why should not he?

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Days later, Gest said, “Yes, I will take your baptism.” The priest wept for joy. Olaf whooped.

But when it was done, that evening in the hall Gest took forth a candle and lighted it at a torch. He lay down on a bench where he could see it. “Now I may die,” he told them.

Now I have yielded.

He let the candleflame fill his vision, his being. He made himself one with it. The light waxed for him until he almost thought it shone on those lost faces, brought them back out of the dark, nearer and nearer. His heartbeat heeded him, slowing toward quietness.

Olaf and the young warriors stood dumb with awe. The priest knelt in shadow and prayed without uttering the words aloud.

The candleflame flickered to naught. Nornagest lay still. Through the hall sounded a wind of the oncoming winter.