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.