Spoiler: The Brothers of Jarl Skur Skulisdottir
Show
"A tale! A tale of heroes, of adventure along the whale-road…though you have had neither, skald,” the battle-scarred woman called. Snorri eyed the feasting warriors lounging at their ease around his mother’s hall — some mighty heroes, some family huscarls, others… loafers who had spent the winter drinking her mead and eating her bread; loafers, like the drunken Kadlin Ottarsdottir who had wandered in off the moors just yesterday with her band of free-swords and imposed upon the good name and hospitality of the jarl.
“Truth, yes, I have never traveled the whale-road, nor had an adventure. And ‘tis also true that I have never seen the world beyond the sight of my mother’s hall.
“Once I had an uncle who—”
“Heroes, I said,” the woman spit the words as much as she spoke them and underscored them with a dashing of a full cup against the wooden floorboards. “Heroes, not scum like that!” The band of nameless men who followed Kadlin echoed her words and pounded their tables.
“None about those of his ilk, eh? Perhaps, then, you would rather hear how my uncle died? How in the end the evil in him won through, and his own brother had to slay him? My mother loathes this tale, but she is already to bed for the hour is late and the moon has set. She would surely not mind a short telling beyond her hearing.”
“My tale begins ‘ere I was born, before the cunning woman drew me forth from my mother’s womb, all twisted legs and broken spine. It begins with the birth of twin sons to the former jarl of this hall, Skuli Valison. Skuli’s young wife had a hard pregnancy, and the cunning woman did all she could. The efforts of that wise crone were for naught, though, for fair Ingithora died bringing two sons into the world. One screamed and thrashed, his tiny limbs flailing about, the other lay like death, blue of face, and worse, his body was misshapen and deformed, much more so than my own broken shape…”
*****
Through some witchery or perhaps a union between man and Jötnar in the distant past, Skuli’s late wife died birthing a monster, a thing not fully human — a thing part giant. That his wife should die bruised his heart; that she would do so bringing this cursed thing into the world broke it. Skuli ordered the cunning woman to take both the mewling things out into the snow and leave them for the wolves. For if one child be so cursed in the womb, surely they must both be; such was the wisdom of my Skuli Valison.
The cunning woman wrapped the babes together in a cloak and carried them out to be left to die. The next morning all were awakened by the sound of what the hall assumed was a dog whimpering in pain, but it was no dog. The giant-blooded son, his skin pinked and blood invigorated by the cold night air, stood like a child of a year or more, though he was but a day old. His brother, the normal one, lay wrapped in the cloak, asleep and safely nestled between his stubby misshapen legs. The brothers were in the center of a circle of snow, reddened with the battle-dew. The misshapen infant, not only twisted but also strengthened with the blood of the Jötnar, had fed the eagles well during the night — fed them with not one but a dozen of Gunnr’s horses. These wolves lay scattered about, twisted in death, save those few still trying to drag their wounded frames away and whimpering like pups not yet weaned.
Not even a man completely shorn of heart could deny the courage and might, not to mention the selflessness of such love between brothers. Putting aside the wisdom of the elders, Skuli brought both babes back into his hall and raised them as his sons. The human one he named Diarf, and the monster was called Boë.
The two grew up, Boë much faster than his brother — much faster and much larger, for the blood of the Jötnar seemed to tell the most in him. The twins, though inseparable as children sharing a womb often are, were otherwise like the moon and the sun. The one had a face like an unformed clay pot, capped in a mass of wiry black hair. The other was fair of face and frame, and much admired among the women of the household. Where Boë was monstrously strong, Diarf was lean and limber. Boë never mastered speaking and often flew into rages that only his brother or father could calm, while Diarf learned poetry and fine words, practiced restraint in all things, and showed mind’s-worth in hesitation and deed.
Boë’s rages grew worse as his body reached terrible proportions and his strength matched that of an entire shieldwall. Only through the intervention of his brother was murder narrowly averted, but even then the jarl had to pay the wergild to those the giant had injured and terrified. The presence of this monster threatened to drive the oath-sworn men and women from
Skuli’s hall and ruin him in the process, for Boë consumed three cattle a week and by himself drank as much mead as a hall of feasting warriors.
*****
“We all know this, crippled skald. Get to the part where brother slew brother.” Kadlin’s followers pounded the tables and stomped the floorboards, echoing their mistress’s words.
“This tale is long, as it should be, for the brothers left home together and sought their own fortunes abroad, giving up all claim to the jarl’s lands and oaths to pass to their younger half-sister, born of the jarl’s second wife Hildísif — my own grandmother. Diarf put on a brave face and made much of a desire for adventure, but all knew the reason for the parting was to take his brother away. Boë’s rages had grown as fearsome as his size, and all feared he would transform into a terrible beast, into Donar’s-foe.”
*****
Their father, the Jarl Skuli, was a ring-giver and -breaker of much renown, a stout hearted man who could weather the storm of spears and stand square in the shieldwall of his people. Thus he was a man of great wealth, but this brothers forsook and took only the most meager of provisions to carry, not even a dragon-headed longship would be theirs. Their father, seeing two young men bound for adventure, pushed upon them arms and armor appropriate for the sons of a jarl, and these they did accept.
Diarf was clad in a helm of good steel and a fine shirt of thrice-linked chain. Upon his right arm Skuli placed a strong shield of lindenwood and metal, well painted in red, blue, and green. In his son’s left hand the ring-breaker Skuli laid a blood-worm named “Foe Serpent”, and its hilt was adorned with Freyja’s tears.
Boë, though not as well loved by the people as his handsome and cunning brother, was no less the son of a jarl. For him was not the chain hauberk, for to clad such a body in linked mail would be as to clad five men in cost and effort. Instead, the jarl ordered a shirt of boiled aurochs hide be made, cut without sleeves and deep in the chest to encompass Boë’s broad frame. This was then mounted with squares of iron nailed into the toughened leather. A headland of axeheads was forged and mounted atop a roof pole cut to serve as haft to be given to the monstrous brother, a weapon so large three men had to carry it to him.
So armed and equipped, the brothers set out on their uncle’s ship to sail to Trotheim and find their wyrd.
For five years the brothers traveled the Northlands, and in this time Diarf gained fame for his courage and mind’s-worth, his skill with the wound-hoe, and his fame as a feeder of ravens. Their first test was at the village of Hallheim in Gatland. There they found the local jarl beset by foes. Northri Ormson’s sheep were disappearing. His hunters had found the tracks of strangers deep in the forest and once a cold camp of the kind used by those under the sentence of outlawry. The jarl was ill; he was a man who had seen a four score winters in his hall, and though he did not lack in mind’s-worth, he lacked in strength of arm and back. Northri longed to pass his hall and oath-bound huscarls to his son, but could not do so with the threat of the sheep thieves, for all knew this to be no mere wolf but a cunning and vile band of men. He asked the brothers for their aid.
Readily the brothers took up this task, and alone they tracked the outlaws deep into the forest. There they found a large camp, and tracks that leading off to other halls and villages. The outlaws had gathered men and women forsaken by even their kin, and had chosen to add to their perfidy by numbering theft and murder amongst their crimes.
Seeing the camp, Boë wished to rush in and slay as was his wont, but Diarf laid hand upon his brother’s forearm and counseled patience. For three days and nights they watched from hiding, all the time Boë fuming and stamping to get to task and bring the wound-sea to the villains.
On the fourth morning, Diarf called out in a loud voice as he stepped forth from his place of concealment and challenged the outlaws. The leader of the band, Guthorm the Ravager — the same Guthorm who had murdered the wife and daughter of Jarl Hialti Bothvarson in the previous summer, known as Guthorm the Rat-Faced by some — strode forth. He laughed to see one lone man — not much more than a down-cheeked boy, really — stand boldly before a dozen armed and desperate outlaws.
The entire band laughed. They laughed at a young man first setting out to seek his fortune and a name for himself. They laughed at Diarf Skulison. They, of course, had not seen Boë still in his concealed position.
Then the battle-sweat flew from outlaw and hero alike.
*****
“You dare to call that monster a hero,” Kadlin said, turning towards her men for their reaction. They laughed on cue, bringing a smug expression to the warrior-woman’s face.
“Yes, brave Kadlin, for they were both heroes that day, and on many days after. As the outlaws laughed at the courage of a man filled with mind’s-worth, they also laughed at a man of cunning, a man who had long mastered the ways of the hnefatafl board. For as they laughed and jeered, Boë crept around the camp to charge them from the unexpected flank. Five outlaws died on his mighty axe in his initial charge, and three more as the blood-ember rose and fell in great arcs once he was among them. Foe Serpent drawn, Diarf rushed to fight Gunthorm the Ravager, and fought as a man in a duel, breaking three of the outlaw’s shields before driving him to his knees amidst the wound-sea of his fellows. There he sank the wound-hoe home and brought the sleep of the sword to the vile outlaw. Those few who still lived scattered into the surrounding forest never to be seen again in those lands.
Taking the heads of the outlaws as grisly trophies and driving the stolen herds of sheep before them, the brothers returned to Jarl Northri and accepted the rings of a generous man. One could not tell the sheep of Ormson from the sheep of other jarls, and though courage, honor, cunning, and might-of-arms had won the day, it would be three years of suits before the Thing ‘ere the disposition of the sheep was settled. Though the brothers played no part in that different sort of battle.
Next they sailed for a time with Ornolf the Shark-Render. With him they raided the land of the Seagestrelanders, taking many thralls as well as a mountain of Freyja’s tears. Then they struck into the Southlands, filling cups with Sif’s hair and the Moons’ leavings and putting the cowardly Southlanders to flight. The fame of the brothers grew, and with the regular wetting of the grass and sand — aye, and even the waves — with the slaughter-dew of his foes, Boë learned something of quietness in his soul…though not enough.
Among the crew of the Wyrm Rider, the sea-steed of Ornolf, was a Bearsarker known as Thorvald the Unwashed. While none of that brave crew was frightened of Boë, all were wary of a man who stood tall as the rafters in a jarl’s hall,and who could lift an ox and eat the whole thing as well. Only Thorvald the Unwashed cared to speak with Boë, and soon he had seen through to the mind’s-worth in the heart of the monster, teaching Boë the ways of Wotan and the sacred madness that calmed the heart as it boiled the blood.
None knew if the All-father would accept a giant-blooded monster as his sworn warrior, but the brothers went ashore with Thorvald the Unwashed to try. For nine days and nine nights Boë hung upon the Tree of Woe, stout spears piercing his wrists, shoulders, thighs, and belly. Anointed with sacred oils and unguents, drenched in freezing water — for the Tree of Woe had been made at the sea’s edge — and his body coursing with the fire of the moss Wotan’s Eye, Boë suffered and died. Yet he did not die; rather he was reborn. On the tenth morning Boë tore one arm free, and with that hand gouged out his own eye, casting it into the bane of wood that Thorvald the Unwashed had formed at his feet.
Thus Boë was consecrated as a sacred warrior of Wotan and inducted into the divine madness of the cult of the Bearsarkers. Boë became more controllable, if any could name a Bearsarker as such. As Ornolf the Shark-Render had no need of two Bearsarkers in his crew, and as isolation and private contemplation are the ways of such men, the brothers soon parted ways with their benefactor and struck out on their own once more.
Much could be said of their adventures after this, of the foes they vanquished together, and of their shared glories. Word filtered back to their father’s hall — no longer ruled by Jarl Skuli Valison’s but rather now by Jarl Skur Skulisdottir. The twins were seen in the shieldwall at Hrolfdale when the Gatlanders raided the Hrolf coast in the summer of the Falling Sky. Skalds told of their slaying the nachtjägers that haunted the grasslands beyond Dnipirstead. It was Diarf and Boë who sailed with Sven Tokison and drove the sea raider Sven Oakenfist from the shores of Hordaland in the autumn of the Year of Leaping Fish. When the great whale Nalithrov harried the ships from the seas, the great heroes Lini the Proud and Raghild Tufisdöttir — named Donar’s Hammer by some — called upon the brothers to accompany them into the beast’s maw. They came out again with a wealth of ambergris the likes of which the world had not seen before and may never again.
In the fifth year of their travels, the brothers choose to spend the winter in the hall of Jarl Mursi the Halfman, the famed half-Nûklander jarl of northern Gatland. That winter the snows fell heavy and the hall echoed with the merry sounds of feasting heroes. All was not to be so pleasant, though, for the world is a dark and terrible place and winter worse still.
A slåtten — a terrible beast birthed from a man when a Bearsarker falls into madness — burst into the hall and slew the huscarls, carrying off the jarl’s eldest child. It is rare for a slåtten to take a prisoner, and this caused even greater alarm in the jarl, more so than his own severed arm and broken spine. Many heroes died that night and in the ensuing hunt for the beast, but the twins pressed forward even after the beast had fled deep into the mountains.
For the rest of that winter and the following seasons the brothers harried the monster from one haven to another. Never had a slåtten, an ever unpredictable monster made from a fallen man, behaved thusly. The twins hunted the creature deep into the mountains, and some say beyond the Northlands and over the Sea of Grass. Such a journey needs be recorded, for none has ever dared so much, the brothers kept no maps or records — even though Diarf was well schooled in the runes — but kept strictly to their task.
The next winter, they finally brought the slåtten to bear, trapped in a dry boxed-in canyon on the edge of a great expanse of sand. The beast had taken the jarl’s child and turned it into an acolyte of sorts in a perverted and debased form of Wotan worship that the All-Father had long forbidden. This was not the only such child taken by the beast, for it had formed a small cult of twisted creatures as foul as itself.
Enraged by their long chase and their mind’s-worth ablaze with the fury of the gods at such travesty against Man and Æsir, the twins charged in, slaying and hacking through the throng. Bodies heaped upon bodies as the crazed cultists ran with eagerness to die upon the brothers’ blades. As at birth, and for the last time, Diarf was beset by a pack of beasts assaulting him only to have Boë stand tall over his brother’s body and defend him with his own life.
But is was not to be Boë’s death or even Diarf’s that day. Instead the ravens called for the the slåtten and his cultists. By savage sweeps of his great axe, the one men have come to call the Three-Man Blood-Ember, the cultists were laid to the sleep of the sword. The swans of blood circled high over the wound-sea and spear-din, and the slåtten readied itself to die or see its followers avenged. And die it did, for as it leapt at Boë, the wounded Diarf rallied his remaining strength and flung Foe Serpent out from the shelter of his brother’s tree-trunk legs. The slåtten, caught off guard by the stinging blade of Diarf was unready when Boë’s mighty axe fell and split the beast in twain from shoulder to manhood.
Long did the brothers journey to reach home, and long did they travel in silent despair. Though they had slain the beast, they had not saved the jarl’s child, and worse, had seen it twisted and perverted by its abductor. What’s more, they had been forced to slay the very child they had attempted to save and thus could only return to the dying jarl’s hall with the head of his foe and not the laughter of his future. The brothers lived beyond that ill-fated venture, but it is thought by many that there was a dying that day within the soul of the brothers — in one perhaps more than the other.
Nevertheless, the jarl was grateful for their efforts and rewarded the brothers with a sea-steed. This they named it Fortune’s Glory, and Diarf called to the skalds to spread word of their deeds. Soon a crew of warriors, all long known in the shieldwall and experienced in the spear-din, gathered. These men and women swore oaths to Diarf and pledged to him as to a ring-giver, though he had no hall. With these — his huscarls of a sort — and his brother, Diarf took to the whale-road once again.
While upon the whale-road it was they who drove away a raid by the Jomsvikings upon the village of Hølen, fought through blood and viscera to bring aid to besieged Gats in Otkel’s Hall, and sought out the Dark Ones who slew so many in Estenfird.
It was in this last venture that the brothers were finally separated, for the battle for that northernmost land was fierce and the terrain wild and untamed. The hirth had been called out and defeated, and the twins were fated to suffer, for after the Battle of the Lost Holding only one could be found. The missing brother had nearly died in the battle, taking a sore wound, and in desperate pleas — perhaps made in pain-filled delirium or perhaps in fear of death — managed to save its own hide only by breaking all oaths and mind’s-worth and pledging himself to the Dark Ones’ cause.
The two brothers met only once more after that, for by then both had taken leadership of the opposing armies. When the shieldwalls met, the spear-din rose to reach the heavens and the gods themselves watched as the Last Hirth stood firm against the horde of beasts and beastmen, of savage Jötnar and foul witches. The battle-dew formed its own river, and the bodies clogged the Ice River for thirteen miles.
As the shieldwall stood against the flood of the monsters, the swans of blood filled the sky yelling for their feast. Many a wound-hoe ripped apart a deformed thing, blood-embers rose and fell with thuds against gnarled and hoary flesh, and the weather of weapons went on for three days and nights.
On the fourth day the two brothers finally met in battle, the shieldwall of men and the hordes of monsters pulling back to give them room like the sacred precincts of the holmgang, for all knew that this fight was the one that the gods, both the fair Æsir and the foul Ginnvaettir longed to see — the battle for the future of Estenfird decided in one meeting, one thrust of the blood-worm or the tearing of mighty claws.
One brother fought with resignation and love, for he saw what a foul thing his womb-mate had truly become. The other howled with savagery and fury, for he lusted for his kinsman’s blood — sought to right old wrongs imagined or half-perceived. Boë bore a mighty shield made from planks cut from a burned and desecrated gods-wood. Diarf wielded a sword forged in the fiery heart of a volcano. Boë’s headland of axes was splintered and sent raining upon the field in fiery shards, giving an opening for his brother to plunge the glowing sword deep into his kinsman’s belly.
Such a blow should end any man, but Boë was not a just a man; he was a Bearsarker, one sworn to the All-Father’s cause and unwavering in his oaths. Even as Diarf drove the blade deeper into the giant-blooded man, he placed one mighty hand upon his brother’s shoulders and one massive fist around his brother’s head. Was he seeking the battle harvest or embracing him with one last remembered semblance of a brother’s love? Only one could ever say, but either way the result was the same; tearing and pulling, he strained his gnarled and knotted muscles until with a sickening snap and tearing noise Diarf’s head came free as one would twist the head from a fish before filleting.
With their champion dead—
*****
“And good riddance,” the scarred woman interrupted, “For we all know the lies and crimes of Diarf Skulison the False, oath-breaker to man and gods alike.” Kadlin had mounted her table to further press home her point with the skald, amidst the cheers and echoing calls of her men.
“Yes, it is as you say. Diarf did prove false and oath-breaker, but he also did much good in his life before he was broken and twisted to evil. Surely there is place in the vastness of Asgard for some remembrance of what great deeds were once done by him in the All-Father’s name,” came Snorri’s measured response.
“Nay, twisted one. Once false, always false. His foul wyrd was set for evil deeds from the day of his birth. ‘Twould have been better had his brother let him die in the snow that first ni—“
“What d’you say?” the halting, rumbling voice rolled like a rockslide from the edge of the firelight.
A shape clumped out of the shadows at the back of the hall. It was a massive, misshapen form in a heavily brocaded tunic, three small children nestled asleep in the crook of his left arm. The head from whence he voice whispered, though his whisper was just shy of a lesser man’s shout, was lost in the smoke and darkness near the rafters. With a groaning of floorboards and a creaking of leather, the monstrous form bent down, bringing its savagely gnarled head into the light, one eye bright and the crystalline blue of a winter sky and the other the old scarring of a gouged and empty socket.
“Sister say tuck young‘uns in. Tuck Snorri in. D’you need tucking also, woman-with head-like-fish?” Suddenly cold sober, Kadlin sat back down with a thump, “N..no, I do not. Thank you Lord Boë Skulison, Slayer of the Wyrm of Vardø and Hunter of the Wolf-Beast of Alta-by-the-Sea. I…I do not.”
Without another word, Boë swept his young nephew Snorri up in his right arm, Snorri who shared something of one great uncle’s twisted frame and something of his other great uncle’s way with words. Young Snorri who longed to be a great skald some day and practiced telling the old stories and singing the old songs beside the fire every night that he could until his mother bade him to bed.
With Snorri safely secured among his siblings in his massive arms, the giant-blooded’s shadow departed the play of the firelight on the wall like the passing memory of a legend.
Re: The Northlands Saga - Spears in the Ice IC
Reply With Quote