Helgi slept until late morning and woke up feeling rather fragile. It felt as if someone was hammering a nail in, just behind his right temple. He supposed he must have spent too long away from his body and was now suffering the consequences.
But what a night it had been! Certainly worth getting a hangover for.
He had been initiated into the sword’s mysteries.
All sorts of opportunities for fun now presented themselves. He could play tricks on people and scare the Ericssons. He could haunt them by making objects mysteriously levitate! No, that wouldn’t work, because he couldn’t pick anything up. But he could still spy on them and discover their plans. He could sneak inside their outbuildings and discover where they had hidden the stuff they had stolen from his father!
With a weapon like this, you could walk into all sorts of places where you weren’t supposed to be and get up to all kinds of mischief. If nobody knew you were there, no one could object to what you were doing.
One could, for example, spy on ladies who were bathing or getting dressed. This thought rather fascinated him, though he told himself he wouldn’t be interested in doing a thing like that. Well, maybe he was, but only for experimental reasons. The question was, would the ladies appear naked or would they be arrayed in strange and beautiful costumes?
Of course, it would be a naughty thing to do, but it was very tempting to do things you wouldn’t normally do when there were no solid barriers and you were unlikely to get caught. The sword positively encouraged you to break all the rules. He could walk through boundaries of every kind! The only restrictions that applied to him now were the ones he chose to keep himself.
Helgi felt intoxicated with the knowledge of his absolute freedom.
He raised himself weakly on one elbow, and was just wondering how to get down from the loft bed without disturbing the pain in his head too much, when he noticed that his blankets were covered with tiny shreds of blue and white cloth. He picked up a blue scrap and examined it curiously. With a swoop of horror, he recognized it was a piece of his father’s best tunic, the one with the gold trim. The white bits embroidered with blue and red thread looked vaguely familiar too—it couldn’t be Gerda’s favourite headscarf, could it?
Helgi stared at the mess uncomprehendingly for a long while before an explanation came to him.
‘Vettir,’ he said, crumpling the cloth in his hand. The hearth-guardian was paying him back for upsetting him last night by making mischief around the farm.
Helgi gathered all the torn-up bits of cloth into a ball and stuffed it under the mattress. He wondered what other damage the little old man had caused. He would have to be stopped at once.
Helgi swung his legs out of bed and lowered himself gingerly to the ground. Then he noticed that the key to the storeroom had been left on the floor beside his father’s bedcloset. Gerda usually wore it on a chain pinned to her apron, but Halfdan must have borrowed it the previous night. Helgi could hardly believe his luck. He would get some food from the storeroom—placate the little old man with a gift. Gerda sometimes used to leave a bowl of porridge with honey for the hearth spirits back home.
He grabbed the key and hastened to the storeroom. Fumbling a little with the lock, he let himself in and filched some apples and nuts and a jug of milk as a peace offering for the hearth guardian. His head was killing him. He took a long drink from the jug and began to feel a little better. He was just placing the food on the floor outside, before relocking the door, when two bare feet planted themselves before him.
‘What’s going on, Helgi?’ Embla demanded.
Helgi gave a guilty start. He was almost too afraid to look up. Whether he had imagined it or not, the form in which she had appeared to him last night—her transcendent beauty—had struck him so deeply that he wasn’t sure he could ever look at her in the same light again. He slowly raised his eyes. Embla was her normal self. Her pale, disconsolate face and the deep shadows under her eyes confirmed what Helgi already knew: that she had stayed up late.
‘Er … do you mean the apples?’ he asked, straightening up.
‘No, of course not!’ Embla snapped.
She knew he’d invaded her room! Helgi felt the blood rush to his face.
‘I—I’m sorry about last night,’ he stammered in confusion.
‘Don’t apologise, there was nothing you could do about it,’ Embla said, with an irritable gesture. Helgi stared at her in bewilderment. His head was throbbing horribly.
‘I mean, I know I’m not among the chosen few,’ she went on, ‘but it would have been nice to have been invited to the war council, since your father’s decisions affect me too.’
Helgi felt a surge of relief. She didn’t know after all. He drew himself up and said impressively, ‘The details are highly sensitive. Halfdan’s handling it on a need-to-know basis.’
‘He’s planning to go soon, isn’t he?’ moaned Embla. ‘It’s going to be so dull once you’ve gone. I’ll probably be sent back to my grandfather’s.’ She hung her head in misery.
Helgi couldn’t help feeling a bit sorry for her. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I don’t think it will matter if I tell you this. The others are going to Norway but I’m not leaving Iceland immediately. I’m going north with Grimnir first.’
Embla looked up in astonishment. ‘What—on your own? Just you and Grimnir?’
‘That’s what my father wants me to do.’
‘Poor you! I thought you’d be going with the others. Trekking north with Grimnir won’t be nearly as much fun. He’s so creepy. Why are you going with him?’
‘My father’s entrusted me with a special mission. I can’t give you the details yet. Actually, I need to talk to you about Grimnir—in private.’ He checked whether anyone was coming along the passage, and then motioned Embla inside the storeroom and pulled the door to, so as to discourage eavesdroppers without totally excluding the light from outside.
‘We shan’t be overheard in here.’
‘What is it?’ whispered Embla, all agog.
‘I couldn’t get to sleep last night because father was snoring his head off. I got up to go to outside and when I came back in, I heard a noise—someone was rummaging around in the back room. So I hid behind the door and peeped through the crack and I saw Grimnir. He was going through the chest where my father keeps his stuff, looking for something. Then he searched behind the furniture, looked under the mats and hearth stones, and examined the wall-panels, tapping them. Now, what do you make of that?’
Embla considered. ‘Perhaps he’s lost something?’
‘If you’d lost something of yours, would you go round tapping the walls?’
‘Well, no. It sounds like he was looking for something belonging to your father. He must have reason to believe it’s hidden somewhere in the house. As for creeping around at night—well, he obviously doesn’t want anyone to know he’s searching for it. Suspicious, if you ask me. Did he find what he was looking for?’
Helgi thought before answering. ‘I’m not sure. He sensed that someone was spying on him and almost caught me—I only just got away in time.’
‘Grimnir’s a strange and secretive person. I wonder what he’s up to?’
Helgi sat down on an old apple rack. ‘Maybe it’s just the way he routinely operates.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘My father made us swear not to tell anyone this, but Grimnir is working undercover. Officially he’s one of the King’s Spies, but he’s come here in secret as an agent of Earl Hakon, to rally supporters of the resistance movement in the north. He says he’s negotiated a deal between Hakon and Queen Gunnhild, which involves dividing the country between them. Grimnir’s afraid that Hakon will depose the king if there’s a battle and he wants to protect the queen above all else.’
‘And Halfdan believes his story?’ asked Embla.
‘Yes. You know how desperate he is to go home. Grimnir’s telling him what he wants to hear. But I don’t know whether he’s right to trust him. What do you think?’
Embla ran her hand through her hair fretfully. ‘I think these are very dangerous waters.’
She got up and started pacing back and forth, in a fever of anxiety.
‘You mustn’t go with Grimnir. He’s after something—that’s why he’s come here offering you help. Some intrigue is afoot! He’s invented this story as a cover or excuse. We don’t know who he is and we can’t be sure who he’s working for. Even if he’s telling the truth and he really is in league with Gunnhild it seems very dodgy to me that he’s prepared to conspire with the king’s enemies. Helgi, if you go with him, who knows what’ll happen to you!’
‘Calm down, Embla!’ Helgi sighed. The prospect of going anywhere alone with Grimnir made him uneasy too, but at the same time he found the man strangely intriguing. He thought about the little game of cat-and-mouse they had played the previous night. It would be interesting to have a chance to study him more closely.
‘Perhaps we should give Grimnir the benefit of the doubt,’ he suggested.
Embla ignored him and continued to pace, biting one of her fingernails.
Helgi stood up; it was clear to him now what he had to do.
‘Look, even if it is dangerous—and we don’t know that for certain—I want to go. Halfdan’s given me this mission because it’s too sensitive to entrust to anyone else. I can’t let him down! I don’t think we should trust Grimnir either, but this way at least I’ll be able to keep an eye on him.’
‘You must tell Halfdan! Tell him what you saw!’ she said urgently.
‘Yes, all right. Come on, I’ve got to lock up.’
As Helgi was about to push the door open, Embla caught him by the arm.
‘I want to come with you.’
Helgi looked at her in surprise. Her face was so earnest and fearful that he could not help smiling.
‘No, Embla. This is a highly delicate and risky operation.’
She looked at him and giggled. ‘I bet he only wants you to carry a message to my grandfather Jon.’
‘What would you know about it?’ retorted Helgi, scowling at her.
‘It’s obvious! Who else does your father know up north? Look, why not tell Halfdan I’m coming with you instead of Grimnir? You can at least trust me, and I know the way.’
‘No!’ Helgi said firmly. She was spoiling everything, and he didn’t want her sharing his adventure.
‘Oh, go on! I’d like to see my grandfather, and besides I’ve got a taste for adventure since sneaking off to the games.’
Helgi threw her an irate glance, ushered her outside, and relocked the door.
‘Is that for breakfast?’ she asked, looking curiously at the nuts, milk, and apples.
‘No.’
‘What are you doing with it then?’
‘None of your business.’ Helgi gathered everything up and made his escape.
He hurried across the yard to the stable. I bet Hedin wouldn’t put up with some bossy girl tagging along with him, he thought crossly. ‘I know the way!’ he mimicked to himself. She had even tried to take charge! He wished he hadn’t asked for her opinion now.
He wondered whether he should mention Grimnir’s suspicious behaviour to his father. He couldn’t imagine what Grimnir had been looking for. He clearly wasn’t after the sword. Helgi never let the sword out of his sight; he wore it all the time and even slept with it in his bed.
Without Grimnir’s timely intervention, he would never have been allowed to keep the sword. Was he really going to tell on Grimnir, when Grimnir hadn’t told on him? If anything, he owed Grimnir a favour!
Helgi felt slightly strange about that. He knew something about Grimnir and Grimnir knew something about him. Their silence had made them accomplices. Did that mean he was deceiving his father? Should he betray Grimnir? Should he tell his father what he had seen?
‘It’ll be hard to persuade my father that Grimnir’s untrustworthy,’ Helgi thought. ‘It’s not what he wants to hear. He’ll only think that I want to get out of the journey north and travel to Norway with my friends instead. No, I’ll confront Grimnir myself, and ask him what he’s up to—if I can work up the courage to do it. Then I’ll decide what to do.’
Whatever the explanation of Grimnir’s movements might be, Helgi felt he must bear the responsibility of keeping them to himself—at least for the time being.
When Helgi opened the stable door, a scene of devastation met his eyes. The floor was littered with broken equipment, and dirty straw from the horses’ stalls had been kicked all over the place. The mess was indescribable, but to Helgi’s immense relief the horses had not been harmed.
He laid the hearth-spirit’s breakfast beside a tumbled stack of boxes and set about tidying up and sweeping the floor. It took him ages. When he had finished, he thought he had better say something to the hearth-spirit in case he was listening.
He cleared his throat and said, ‘Vettir, I’m sorry about our misunderstanding last night. I don’t want to harm you, I just want us to be friends. I don’t use the sword as a weapon! I was only playing with it. It’s a magic sword, you see, and I use it to do incredible things. It gives me the power to leave my body, so I can do all sorts of crazy stuff, like walk through walls and taste beer with my hand, and see in the dark, and listen to colours with my eyes—’ Helgi paused, frowning. ‘Or is it see colours with my ears? Anyway, I can see things I can’t normally see, and hear things I couldn’t hear before, and meet people I never knew were there—other spirits, I think. But I can’t do any of this unless I carry the sword. That’s the only reason I had it with me. I’d never use it on anyone, I just want to have fun. Well, that’s all I wanted to say. I hope you will accept this present of food and my apologies.’
There was no reply. Feeling slightly foolish, Helgi bowed politely to the empty room before he left.
Crossing the yard again, he couldn’t help looking at the grass that carpeted the roofs. It seemed bigger than before, more verdant, as if it had grown overnight. But that couldn’t be possible. It was same grass, but he couldn’t look at it now without thinking about the humming, shimmering force at the heart of it, the strange potent music bubbling within. The song wasn’t audible to him this morning, but even so, the grass looked pregnant with it, as if it might burst forth at any moment. Something had changed. He couldn’t look at the grass the way he used to, just as he couldn’t look at Embla without thinking about the dis. The thought of treading on the grass, even softly … Helgi broke into a run, suddenly frightened.
When he got back to the house, he sat down for a late breakfast. Gerda served him some reheated porridge. Malachi, who had already eaten, was sitting by the fire, telling Grimnir about his childhood in Dublin. They seemed to be getting along like old friends.
Gerda said, ‘Helgi, when I got up this morning, I found a broken pot lying on the floor and someone had kicked the ashes from the fire all over the living room. Do you know anything about it?’
Helgi shook his head in denial. He glanced at Grimnir and their eyes met. Grimnir’s face was expressionless. Helgi quickly looked away. Grimnir evidently knew, but he hadn’t let on.
‘Well, I can’t think who else would’ve done it,’ said Gerda. ‘It’s not the sort of thing your father would do, even when he’s in one of his moods.’
‘Everyone got pretty wrecked at the party last night,’ said Helgi by way of explanation. ‘Not me, though,’ he added hastily.
‘The key to the storeroom is missing too,’ said Gerda.
Helgi held it out to her. ‘Here it is—I found it.’
Gerda gave him a suspicious look. ‘Did you borrow it from my room?’
‘Of course not! It was lying on the floor by the bedcloset. I was just bringing it back to you!’
Gerda directed a frown at the bedcloset. ‘Must’ve been your father then.’
Anxious to escape, Helgi bolted down his breakfast and got down from the table to go outside. He was beginning to have second thoughts about exploring next door. Eric’s homestead-guardian would be even more vicious than Arnor’s and he’d probably end up having to fend the little fellow off with the sword. He didn’t like the idea of fighting a hearth-spirit. That would surely bring bad luck.
The rest of the day was uneventful, but when Helgi climbed his loft ladder to go to bed, he got a nasty surprise. There were brown and white chicken feathers everywhere: all over his mattress, stuck to his blanket and the walls, caught in the cobwebs among the rafters … Someone had ripped a hole in his pillow and pulled out all the stuffing! Sighing to himself, he began to scrape the feathers up and stuff them back in the pillow sack. Vettir was up to his tricks again. The offering hadn’t worked.
‘Ungrateful little beggar,’ Helgi muttered.
Then his body stiffened as something else caught his eye. There were deep scratch marks all over the wooden headboard of the bed. Someone had defaced it with a sharp tool! Helgi felt indignation swelling in his chest. The headboard was permanently scarred and Gerda would blame him! He rubbed at the damage frantically with his hand. He would have to fill the scratches with dirt or polish, and just hope she wouldn’t notice.
Several of the marks he was trying to erase bore a vague resemblance to letters. Helgi stopped and traced them slowly with his finger—a zigzag like a streak of lightning, a twig with two branches. This was no act of mindless vandalism, he realized, but a message, scrawled in large, spidery runes.
He knew at once it couldn’t be Embla’s work. Embla would never have scratched one of her notes here, and even if she had, in a moment of madness, she wouldn’t have made such a mess of it. Embla was a stickler for tidy handwriting, neat lines, and proper punctuation.
The first two lines were cut so badly that it was hard to identify the individual letters, let alone deduce the overall meaning, but the sense built up slowly and gradually, as Helgi eliminated the meaningless scratches and divided what was left into groups. The message said:
free the sprits yu hav trapt in the sord
do as i say or yooll be sorry
As Helgi stared at the runes, a strange feeling washed over him. Vettir seemed to think he was using the sword to trap spirits. Was that what the sword was for? He touched the hilt of the sword with his fingertips, his stomach churning as he thought of the swirling, cloudy shapes that seethed within the blade whenever he drew it. Could those be spirits, trapped inside? He thought of Skeggi, whom he had struck down in a desperate battle to save his skin, and the dozen or so spiders whose lives he had put out just for fun. Could they be inside the sword at this very moment?
Helgi quickly unbuckled the sword and examined it, drawing it only halfway from the sheath. So the sword was a thing for catching spirits. A spirit-catcher. No wonder Vettir was afraid of it!
The thought that Skeggi might not be dead and gone after all, and that his ghost was inside the sword made Helgi very nervous, so nervous that he was almost too afraid to handle it. Was the sword secure? What if Skeggi were to break out? His mouth grew dry as he imagined what Skeggi would do to him …
You’ll be sorry, the message said, but what did that mean? Was Vettir warning him that the sword was dangerous? Or was he making some kind of threat? Vettir obviously hated him with a passion.
Helgi began to feel truly afraid for his life.
He laid the sword gently on the bed and sat there looking at it. It was ancient thing, decrepit with age and use. By the look of it, the sword had a very long history. There would be other spirits in there, captured by the sword’s previous owner, or owners. He wondered how many men had used it before him and Skeggi, and how many spirits they had caught in total. There could be any number of souls bottled up in there—hundreds and hundreds!
Helgi had another strange and absorbing thought. Perhaps it wasn’t the blade that came to life when he drew it, but the spirits who were imprisoned inside. But they only woke for him. Only he had the power to see them and rouse them. No, only he and Grimnir …
Eager to find out what else Vettir knew about the sword, Helgi went to work on the next two lines. He read:
harmless my foot
if i catch yu fooling with it agen there ll be big trubble
‘Huh!’ said Helgi aloud. As if the little swine hadn’t caused enough ‘trubble’ already!
But this was very bad news. It meant that from now on he wouldn’t be able to use the sword at home or at the Manor, or anywhere else Vettir considered his home territory. The consequences of disobeying his ban could be terrible. A truly vengeful hearth-spirit might hurt Kol, or put a curse on the farm, or even—and this horrible thought chilled Helgi to the bone—take the knife he had used to carve the headboard and apply it to his throat while he was asleep …
He had to get down flat on his stomach to read the last line, which was written in cramped script just above the level of his sheepskin-and-straw sleeping-pallet:
bribing me wont work i gave the appls to kol
Helgi frowned. Bribing him? The apples hadn’t been meant as a bribe! He’d only been trying to apologise. The hearth-spirit had taken a real dislike to him, it seemed, though perhaps the message ended on a slightly softer note.
Thinking it over, Helgi decided that his fear of Skeggi was greater than his fear of Vettir. There was no way he could comply with Vettir’s demand. Release the spirits? The berserk would rip his head off if he let him out! Not that he even knew how to go about freeing them. There was nothing he could do.
But the thought of Skeggi going stir-crazy inside the sword also worried him. It was even (and this was very strange) beginning to gnaw at his conscience. He felt bad about the captive spirits, very bad indeed. The spirits had been captured by force and caged; and he, as the owner of the sword, was now their keeper. That was why Vettir had ordered him to release them. He evidently thought Helgi had the power to do it. Perhaps Helgi bore some kind of responsibility now that the sword was his. If that were so, he couldn’t just plead ignorance and hope that counted as a good excuse. That would be sheer cowardice.
The best and boldest course of action would be to go back to Vettir and ask for his help. Now, at once, before he lost his nerve. The stable would be empty of people at this time of night, so he would be able to talk to the hearth-spirit without being overheard.
Helgi hid the sword in the hay at the bottom of his bed (he would go unarmed as a sign of peaceful intent), took a lantern, and went outside. He crossed the dark yard, walked quietly up to the stable, and pushed the door open. Holding up the lantern, he looked down the lane of stalls. He couldn’t help feeling nervous, though the stable was warm and he could hear the horses breathing and munching their hay, and knew that Kol was among them. He stepped inside, closing the door behind him softly.
‘Vettir,’ he said, ‘I got your message. I understand what you want, and I agree with you that releasing the spirits would be the kindest thing to do. I want to set them free because I think it’s cruel to keep anything caged up. I can’t imagine anything worse than being a prisoner.’
This was entirely true. Helgi prized his own freedom more than anything else. He knew he did, because back in Norway he had been prepared to die for it. Freedom was to him more precious than life. He would rather the spirits had died by the sword than have to suffer in captivity.
‘So I will free the spirits, I promise,’ he went on, ‘as soon as I’ve worked out how to do it. I want to do it safely, you see. One of the spirits is a bit … Well, let’s just say, I can’t deal with him on my own. But if you could help me …’
Helgi made a hopeful pause, though he wasn’t expecting to get an immediate response.
‘Well, if you can help, you know where to find me,’ he said.
Helgi spent the next few days watching and waiting for a reply, but the hearth-spirit remained quiet. There were many questions Helgi would like to have asked him, but he thought it better not to seek him out. Vettir was such a prickly creature. There was a risk that if he bothered him too much, he might upset him all over again.
When he heard nothing from Vettir, Helgi wondered whether to turn to Grimnir for help. He often imagined himself asking Grimnir how to free the spirits—just casually, as it were. Several times it was on the tip of his tongue to ask, but he couldn’t do it. He was too terrified. He never spoke to Grimnir unless he had to, and when he did, it was only about trivial things, such as asking him to pass something at the table. Grimnir never said much to him either, but Helgi knew this was just an act. There was some dark reason behind it, something unspoken and terrible. Helgi could not guess what it was; he only knew that it was not up to him to initiate that conversation. He was only a child. In any case, once Vettir had quietened down, the problem of how to free the spirits became less urgent.
During this time, Helgi thought a lot about the secrets that had been revealed to him that night: the worms and beetles hidden inside the walls of the house, going about their lives unobserved, and the spiders hanging from the dark rafters, each one a shining pulse that was invisible or inaudible to him now. Whereas once he would have thought nothing of squashing a bug, he could not look at a spider or an insect now without a feeling of fascination and unease. He studied them with curious eyes, but no matter how hard he looked, he could not hear the songs they were singing. He felt a longing to see the strange, underneath world again, and a desire to understand it, but he was frightened because he had offended Vettir. He was afraid that he had violated some rule, and afraid of disturbing what lived below or lay beyond the surface in case it broke through and ran riot. Much as he longed to go exploring again, he did not dare break the ban that Vettir had placed on the sword.
Embla’s prophecy made sense to him now. Skeggi’s sword was the ‘gift’ that had been conferred on him. The name he had given the sword was entirely apt. When he used the sword, he could indeed ‘see further and know more than most men’. As for ‘moving between the worlds, living and yet dead’, well, the sword did turn him into a kind of ghost. He could move between two worlds—the everyday world and the invisible world that lay beneath it—just like the spirit of a dead man, even though he was still alive.
Helgi couldn’t decide whether to tell Embla that her prophecy had come true. ‘She might be delighted to discover she has a genuine talent,’ he thought. ‘Then again, she might just think I’m making it up. She thinks I’m odd enough as it is.’ In the end, he said nothing.
He suspected he hadn’t even begun to understand what the sword was showing him yet.
There were other things to worry about in any case. Helgi wasn’t sure whether his father was deliberately avoiding him or simply very busy, but whenever he tried to ask him for details of his special mission, Halfdan found some excuse to prevaricate. ‘Not right now; this isn’t the time or place,’ he would mumble, if there were others in the room, or ‘Later perhaps: I was just going out,’ if Helgi caught him on his own. Finally, much to Helgi’s annoyance, his father absented himself altogether. Helgi woke one morning to find that he had gone to Reykjavik with Grimnir to buy supplies for the expedition, and wouldn’t be back for at least a fortnight. Helgi resigned himself to yet another long wait. ‘I want to know what’s going on, but nobody will tell me anything,’ he complained to Kol. ‘Vettir, Grimnir, my father … they’re the only ones who really know, but I can’t talk to any of them.’
The Adventures of Helgi the Viking 