233. Can Not the Whole World Be Happy (3).
233. Can Not the Whole World Be Happy (3).
Hamburg had many advantages.
After the rise of Árós, Scandinavia—though it didn't seem all that lacking compared to the famed granaries of the world—was still considered a frontier by the Franks and their southern friends.
The greatest point was that it could be linked to my homeland by land. In addition, from Britain, forces could be projected directly into East Frankia and Eastern Europe via the Elbe or Weser, and the lowlands between the Elbe and Weser were surprisingly prime land.
Moreover, standing at the midpoint connecting east and west, it was easy to project influence over the numerous minor Slavic tribes of Eastern Europe that Oleg was swallowing up and secretly coveting.
As Hrolf had told me when I was troubled before this war, the occupation of Hamburg and Rouen wasn't merely about exalting the North Sea's prestige and making my name known to those arrogant Franks and their underlings! It wasn't that simple a gain; rather, it was the thread and foundation that could connect the suddenly appearing North Sea Empire together.
It might merely be a conqueror's excuse, but perhaps the reason such fearsome conquerors as Alexander of old, the Roman Empire, and the future Genghis Khan focused on territorial expansion was not that they were blood-crazed men who couldn't live a day without war, but because of the characteristic of an empire that to not expand is to inevitably collapse.
Of course, that was a rather audacious leap and a conclusion that chopped away all sorts of variables.
At least I ought to feel something from their rise and fall.
If all the blessings that had fallen upon the North Sea lands were to vanish with my death, then my empire—unified by relying on abnormal production—would naturally drift apart due to its geographical nature of having a rough sea in the middle, and after a few wars, would it not ultimately shatter?
And in that process, would my children, Sigmarr included, be crushed by the weight of an overly heavy crown, lose themselves, and be abandoned by the people to vanish miserably into the back of history?
I wanted to protect the empire I had built with my own hands, and I wanted to keep making the people in it happy. In truth, what mattered most was that I wanted to take good care of my family and the descendants of those who followed me.
So that they could hold on and survive tenaciously, no matter what direction the world's unpredictable changes might throw at them.
The first step toward that was the outcome of this war, and though there was still much to be done, I no longer fretted or anguished.
Because I had already come too far for that.
"I've come too far to regret the past. Don't you think so?"
The town on the east side of the Jutland peninsula that Konungr Bagsecg had established to curry favor with me (...) — Orhous — had, in less than a year since the ground was tamped and the palisade raised, already laid down quite decent roads and drawn out the people who had been living stuck in Jutland's remote mountain swamps.
Just as bees swarm where honey abounds and ravens flock to a battlefield, people gathered where silver coins flowed.
Though the North Sea economy was not yet so vast as to require a proper monetary system, the silver coin jars buried in the backyards of North Sea folk were increasing to the point where one had to seriously consider serving the two absolute gods of price, supply and demand.
All over Orhous, fur traders who had come from far beyond Norrland, from the land of the Sámi, haggled diligently, and the Romans of Cherson, having completed necessary transactions in Árós via Kyiv and Novgorod, bought the furs and provisions they needed ahead of their ambitious voyage to the island of Britain.
Naturally, where money and merchants gathered, the attention of the Jarls followed. Lawmen dispatched from Hedeby and Ribe examined the fairness of commercial dealings and ensured no one was wronged. Of course, in that process, merchants desiring convenience gave offerings to the high ones, and those offerings went back and forth.
Priests trained at the Great Temple of Hel in Árós were busy setting up a branch here in Orhous to offer sacrifices to the sea god Njord (Njord) and to beg the care of the death goddess who ruled over all the North Sea.
As I calmly gazed upon that scene of something vast and dynamic, I suddenly threw out that disjointed remark—that I had come too far to regret.
My eldest brother, several times wiser than me, readily received it.
"Far, very far indeed. From the Jarl of Árós, which was merely a small fishing village, to Konungr over the Svear, Danes, Geats, and the island of Britain, and finally to Fylkir of the North Sea. One cannot even see the way back anymore."
The dispute between the newly independent state of Brace and West Frankia surrounding Le Mans Castle was concluded by settling the border line.
In that process, Jarl Hestein, who had deeply intervened, came to Rouen Fortress to wrap up the war as well, and spoke with Björn—or so I heard. Those two men who had once reached beyond Iberia to Rome (the fake one) and Constantinople, what could they be plotting this time?
As it happened, Björn seemed to be thinking of Iberia as well, and he brought up that story to me.
"It was on the way back after we had churned the sea beyond Iberia with Hásteinn. The turbaned ones, who had already discerned our route, rushed at us in droves. It was a sight I had never beheld in my life. Warriors all armed in gleaming iron, and countless great ships filled with such warriors stretching endlessly."
As if he had returned to that very place right then, Björn was gazing at something far off; the veins on the back of his hand rose, and a faint smile played about his lips.
"Hásteinn and I had poked and prodded every waterway of Iberia, so it was only natural that their ruler was greatly angered. In their tongue, they called him Emir, but I never saw his face in person. Had we met, one of us two would surely have died."
Toward Björn, who was knitting his brows as if in regret, I gave him a smile similar to the one that had risen to my eldest brother's lips. I didn't know how well that Emir fought, but defeating Björn, a warrior renowned even among Northmen, especially on the pitching sea, would be no easy feat.
"Anyway, Hásteinn and I charged forward thinking, 'We are dead now!' There was no way back—our ship was heavy with all manner of goods, our warriors weary from the long campaign, and even if we turned back there was no place that would welcome us. There was nothing for it but to press onward."
The battle they faced in that extremely narrow strait was so legendary that countless skalds still sing of it and exalt the names of Björn and Hásteinn. After somehow breaking through the wave of enemies that charged endlessly, Björn and Hásteinn fled with all their might and at last reached my father Ragnar who was in Uppsala.
Straight away, Father gave Björn the island of Munsö, and the gold and treasures that filled Björn's name and the island of Munsö became a legend.
"Many died indeed. The turbaned bastards of Iberia were strong. For the first time, I felt the fear of death, and I felt the shortcomings of us Northmen. When the warrior who had saved my life once in Rumi (the false Rome) sacrificed his life in my stead again, I wanted to turn the ship right then and there and go with him to Valhalla. Had it not been for Hásteinn, I would have died that day."
Björn's quietly murmuring voice carried a deep ache diluted by the passage of years, and his expression as he spoke of that pain as if it were nothing made him look, somehow, older.
After a long while of staring ahead, slowly riding his horse alongside mine across the well-paved road, Björn turned his head slightly to glance behind us, where we rode at the head of the column.
There, a much younger-faced Björn, Refil, silently urged his horse onward, following behind us. Alongside him were my warriors and his own comrades.
"My Fylkir. Not only my own unworthy self, but my younger brother has already surpassed our great father and grandfather, and the countless legendary Konungrs above them. I still suffer nightmares when I recall that Iberian sea. Had my father and mother, my brothers, and Hásteinn not been there, I would have crumbled entirely."
Björn's gaze, which in some way resembled the look Hrolf had once fixed upon me, swirled with a tempest of emotions — adulation and concern and faith all mingled together.
"In the end, those who lead have no choice but to press onward. We shall walk that tormented and lonely path at your side, so stride it without fear. Your name is far greater and heavier than you think, Fylkir of the North Sea."
They said language held power.
I had thought my own voice certainly held power, but listening to Björn's words today, I realized that what I had been wielding was nothing more than simple, brute loudness.
No matter how much great power and impossible knowledge I brandished, in the eyes of my older brother and my mother, I would always be the little(?) younger brother and the young son.
Toward such a brother, I nodded firmly.
"Brother. Where in this world is there anything I should fear? Rather, the world shall fear me. So do not worry overmuch. I am Helgi Ragnarsson."
I had meant to shift the mood by declaring a self-assured smile and an arrogance-laden sentence, but instead my brother smiled and silently nodded.
"Both our mothers will be waiting, so let us quicken the pace. Let's go! Camembert! Hya!"
[Ihihihing—! Fweut! Fweut!]
Feeling sheepish, I jabbed Camembert in the flank, and the clever beast raised his voice as if to ask why, yet obediently shifted to a trot.
Toward the warriors of the North Sea, who did not panic in the slightest at their Fylkir suddenly darting ahead, but simply matched his speed.
The people of Orhous bowed their heads one by one to the figure racing at their fore, and even the sun veiled itself behind the clouds to clear the way for him.
Not long after, beyond Zealand, all the North Sea folk in the surrounding lands bowed their heads beside the road the Fylkir traveled as he climbed the eastern coastal path of Scandinavia, each one yearning to set eyes directly upon him at least once.
Even the dumb beasts of Scandinavia knew that the ruler of these lands had returned.
*****
Whether or not the Easter festival of the Catholic-believing Franks across the sea was thrown into chaos by an utterly unexpected divorce trial of the century(?),
the people of the North Sea, whose great Fylkir had raised everything from the cornerstone to the roof ornaments in the blink of an eye, had largely finished the grueling sowing season and were now in the thick of preparing the festival to welcome the true beginning of summer.
Even if the land touched by the grace of the Fylkir and Hel meant you could roughly scatter seeds and the crops would grow well on their own, farming was fundamentally still a matter of digging furrows, pulling weeds, and waging a daily war against all manner of loathsome pests and animals.
When the hard labor that started at dawn wrapped up around sunset, one would down a cup of fine ale brewed from overflowing grain, and if the mood improved, one would spend a small fortune to taste a sip of the noble wine that had crossed those rough sea routes.
As they passed such intense daily lives, news eventually arrived that the Fylkir and the warriors under his command, who had set out back in winter, had won a great victory.
And so, while all the peoples of the North Sea — stretching from Britain to Scandinavia, and from Novgorod to Kiyiu — raised cheers, those who cheered most fervently were the people of Árós, brimming with pride that their city was the heartland of the North Sea that the Fylkir himself had founded.
Only death is absolute. To put it another way, everything except death is finite and mutable — following these teachings of Hel's priests, the people of Árós, utterly mad for all manner of wondrous things and novel, exotic curiosities, were delighting in their environment, which changed by the day under the command of Jarl Leon.
The recent obsession of these hipsters was not the naked marble statues of the gods going up one by one in the great plaza, but the massive mansion on the eastern hill of Árós — made even more famous by the name 'Fylkir's Hill' — and its heir.
That name was none other than Sigmarr Helgison.
The one who was his father was a giant of a man whom even the most stout and self-confident brute from some village would have to crane his neck to look up at, and the one who was his mother was a woman famed for the exotic beauty of her Norse-Sámi mixed blood — yet she too possessed a stature so tall that most grown men had to tilt their heads upward, giving her an imposing majesty difficult to approach.
Naturally, the Norsemen, who were like folk who considered the breeds of horses and hounds when breeding them and possessed some genetic wisdom, expected that a child between those two would not be ordinary.
Yet the appearance of the infant Sigmarr, not yet a full year old, was beyond extraordinary — it was singular and unique.
For a start, his massive frame, which already made his two grandmothers (Asta, Áslaug) struggle, could somehow be understood by tracing the paternal and maternal bloodlines. But the expression he wore while being held in his mother's arms as she strolled through the plaza after lunch — though it was an irreverent thought that would surely be punished by the Goddess Hel —
made people feel that he was not a creature like themselves.
That expression, as he was cradled in his mother's arms and stared over the shoulders of the deeply wary guards at the people peering here and there.
'How am I ever going to feed and provide for this lot...!'
It was exactly that kind of expression.
At first it had been adorable, but the more one looked, the more one realized that his gaze was filled with worries an infant could never possibly possess, and those who noticed it found they could not prevent their own heads from bowing of their own accord.
"Indeed, the son of a demigod is something different!"
"Is the son of a demigod then a half-demigod?"
"No matter that he is the Fylkir's son, this is beyond reason. As I see it, the Fylkir himself is truly a god, and Lord Sigmarr is a demigod!"
Of course, all manner of rumors produced by people who loved to talk reached the ears of bards who loved to sing, becoming all manner of songs that in turn expanded and reproduced the rumors once more.
And the suspicions(?) of the people of the North Sea and Árós transformed into certainty at the grand triumph ceremony that Jarls Hrolf and Leon had splendidly prepared — the moment that Sigmarr, prettied up and cradled in his mother's arms, spotted the approaching figure of his father from far off, broke free of his mother's embrace, flung aside the adorable little cap that had been placed on his head, and went darting forward on those stubby little legs.