6.
6.
The historic Thing of Uppsala was convened.
Jarls and other important persons from every region arrived at Uppsala, riding feverishly or making their way on foot.
Soon, within Uppsala's sal—the hall, the mead hall where they gathered—copious amounts of liquor would flow, the name of King Ella of Northumbria would be torn apart in the air thousands of times, and the spacious hall would resound with voices calling for a sacrifice in Father's name to Odin and the ritual offering of a few slaves in human sacrifice.
I had not a shred of interest in such things. Though I had lost most traces of the modern man who had crossed over from the 21st century, I could not stomach human sacrifice—one last remaining thread of inhibition held me back from condoning it myself.
Thus, I had already forbidden human sacrifice several winters ago, using my renown as the son of the gods.
"The gods desire no such thing. All the priests before me were wrong. If my words do not convince you, then let us stake our honors and test one another. The gods shall determine the victor."
The priests and their great warriors who took up my challenge, bristling with 'You insolent brat, how dare you speak where your elders are speaking!', were sent to the gods' embrace by my own hands.
However, these things—slavery, human sacrifice—were a kind of culture, and could not be uprooted at a stroke. There were no longer any men who prattled on about human sacrifice before my eyes, but behind my back, it was probably being practiced still. Far from Árós, sacrificial burials would likely be continuing as well.
'Every time I catch sight of it, I'll beat them all senseless.'
Why bury precious manpower and hang them upon sacred trees? They ought to use their heads. Foolish bastards.
I myself did not believe those words people pointed at me and spoke—the living witness of the gods, Hel's great warrior. Seventeen winters had passed since my transmigration, and I had never once beheld the shadow of Goddess Hel with my own two eyes.
What I did believe in, however, was the blessing of the stats and traits that my past self had breathed into my present self. I did not know what mysterious action of the cosmos had brought about this state, but the strength and authority I wielded were clearly things unseen in ordinary reality.
One facet of that was, precisely, the endless procession of supplies now unfurling before my eyes.
"Astounding. Truly astounding."
Ubba, who would have looked perfectly at home with a pair of round spectacles, did not conceal his somehat agitated impression as he observed the multitude of grains, bread, fine-quality spears, shields, and other such supplies pouring in from Árós.
"To think that a single Árós farmer produces at least three times the goods a farmer of Uppsala does..."
My brother, quick with numbers, pondered something for a moment before he abruptly [whipped!] his head toward me.
"Helgi. This is truly beyond sense. Are you a magician? Have you truly never met Goddess Hel? Are you truly Father's son?"
"Ubba..."
What in the world was this all about?
Ubba, who had [clamped] my mouth shut in an instant, was rather feverish and spilled his words as if a dyke had burst.
"Árós is drawing in our Svear and Danes, the old Geats and Jutes beyond them, even the folk and goods from across the sea. A preposterous abundance of food, at even more preposterously cheap prices. It's no wonder people are flocking there—do you know what will happen if this state continues? My young but great elder brother."
Ubba's gleaming eyes had a different flavor from Sigurdeu's. If Sigurdeu's was a gloomy shade, Ubba's was something akin to madness.
"I'm not sure I follow. Isn't it a good thing to eat well and live well? When people gather and the town grows, the elders of the Thing might have some headaches, but..."
Even if we couldn't construct a water supply, the lake and marshlands were nearby and abundant, so if we could just handle the sewage properly, wouldn't the town grow larger? Then I could earn a lifetime of idle living simply from the indirect taxes slyly woven into the roads and sea trade.
'I already have no worries for coin from the lands descended from my mother alone, but the more money, the better.'
This was not an age with proper finance; for now, being a landholder was supreme.
In that sense, my maternal family, a priestly household so ancient one could not fathom how many generations it spanned, were truly stupendous landholders. If I set my mind to it, I could lay claims all over, thrash the Jarls who amounted to village chiefs and district heads in each region, and multiply my property many times over... but I felt no need, and thus remained amply content with Árós and its surroundings.
"Odin is a mischievous god. For He always bestows His favor by standards one can never know."
"What?"
"The strengthening of the Konungr's authority—the very thing our grandfather and father so longed to achieve. The Svear and Danes scattered across this land, the Geats beyond the mountains, the Jutes beside Zealand, even our kinsmen across the eastern sea. At last, the chance to unite them into one lies in your hands, Helgi."
Ubba's grip tightening on my shoulders actually imparted no great sensation, but what tensed me was the gleam in his eyes. Those deep green eyes our brothers all shared. The same hue, yet could they be so vastly different? There was an unknowable obsession in Ubba's eyes that any onlooker might call the eyes of a madman.
"As Karl of the Franks did, I say. How, then, can I treat you as simply one more among my brothers? Helgi Ragnarsson, Jarl of Árós."
"... Ubba."
He was, in his own way, straining mightily to crush my shoulders, yet even that—owing to my far greater height—made him seem almost to be hanging from me. I lightly brushed off his hands and shook my head slightly.
"We have to set out to sea at once—what on earth are you talking about? Let us focus only on the task before us first. Father's vengeance is the most important."
I, a man of common sense from the mid-800s, explained as rationally as I could, but this madman, now even leaking a simpering smile, would not listen to a word I said. Seeing him laugh that way, he resembled Sigurdeu somewhat.
"Aye. Father's vengeance. I swear, if I capture Ella, I shall kill him by the most brutal means I am capable of. But Helgi. How long must we wash blood with blood? How long must we capture and sell the cross-believers of the west for the silver and gold of Miklagard and the Muslims beyond? When a greater thing, a more magnificent thing, is ours to take."
He was no different from Sigurdeu, who wanted to swallow Saxony at a gulp, as brothers go. It sounded pleasant enough to the ear. But as a 21st-century sentiment appealer, I wanted to tell him to consider the blood upon the path to that end and the blood that would flow thereafter... but, for the moment, it was not the time.
"That is something we can discuss just as well after we have captured and slain that Ella of Northumbria."
Fearing that this uncomfortable conversation would prolong, I turned to seek out Ivar, who had been designated the commander of this vanguard.
"No matter how great a warrior you are, you cannot escape fate. Helgi."
From behind, Ubba's low voice was driven into my ears. For an instant, I seemed to hear the pleased laugh of some aged crone alongside it, but I dismissed it as an illusion and soon forgot.
*****
I had intended to find Ivar, but watching the men bustling to and fro, hauling grain and readying the ships, somewhat dampened my enthusiasm. More precisely, the image of Ubba from just moments before still lingered in my mind, and I needed a little time alone.
'As it happens, Ivar seems to be in the hall where the Thing is underway...'
I turned my steps back and headed not for the main entrance leading to the hall, but for the rear door that connected directly to the householder's living quarters. Seen this way, the lives of Jarls and Konungrs were lived within politics. One's own home was itself the decision-making body for all manner of policies, the administrative office. And the judiciary as well.
"Jarl Helgi."
"You're working hard."
Today as always, the honorable Huskarls faithfully fulfilled their duties standing guard. I lightly encouraged them and entered the house, which felt clammy from the rain that had fallen until daybreak.
"Helgi. Come quickly. You left this morning without taking a meal, and we were just then worrying about you."
"Mother, Mother. Did you pass the night well? With the supplies flooding in from Árós, I had no choice but to go out with Hrolf."
Once to Mother Asta, and once more to Mother Áslaug. Having to bow my head once to each of my two mothers felt oddly incongruous. Had some awkwardness unknowingly lingered within me because I had not often visited Uppsala since I was ten?
At my stepmother Áslaug's warm words of welcome, my own mother Asta, seated beside her, smiled placidly.
"Sigurdeu was just here a moment ago. That boy, who looked sadder than anyone, made himself smile as he comforted us two."
So that was why a familiar harp lay beside the two of them as they occupied themselves making clothes. The emotionally volatile Sigurdeu was most devoted to our mothers.
'So our mothers had to endure it.'
Whenever I had to listen to Sigurdeu's utterly preposterous singing, my chest suddenly felt stuffy, my blood rushed to my head, and my eyes would close of their own accord.
But no—hadn't my own mother been fond of Sigurdeu's songs? I couldn't understand it, but there was no accounting for personal taste.
Carefully scrutinizing my expression, the two of them spoke with a [pf-] of laughter.
"Do not worry overmuch. He's not so tactless a fellow as to sing with the Jarls gathered right beside us."
Huhu-.
The foremost figure of this household. A queen who had borne no fewer than five sons. Though she smiled warmly, as the daughter of the Jarl of Gotland, she was a person of wealth and power that none could dismiss.
Could a woman who had rendered such immense, unseen contributions to Father's legendary achievement of plundering the Franks possibly be an ordinary person? My stepmother was simply, by nature, a quiet and modest lady, and so she always remained in the background.
To a woman who had spent her entire life guarding Father's side in the Uppsala hall, which was little different from a den of political vipers, a greenhorn Jarl who had survived a mere seventeen winters could hold no secrets of the heart—she had read mine with ease, it seemed.
"I see. I am relieved that you both appear well. I must take my leave now. There is much to prepare."
At any rate, facing the faces of my two mothers felt unusually difficult today. For my needlessly sharp eyes showed me all too clearly the deep shadows seated at the corners of the two mothers' eyes as they smiled upon me without reserve.
"Helgi."
As I was about to leave the room, still warm with lingering heat, my stepmother's cold hand enveloped mine.
"I said this to Sigurdeu as well, but we would have you not worry for us. Your father surely did not fear death. Whether he died of a serpent's bite, drowned at sea, or was struck down by lightning upon the road he traveled. For your father is the man Odin himself will fling open the gates of Valhalla and charge forth for, to seat at His own side."
Her eyes, brimming with moisture, lost not a shred of their light beneath the deep shadows. Beside my stepmother, silently nodding, my own mother's expression was nothing but tranquil. Had the revered priestess of Hel received some revelation?
"I understand. Mother. I know not if I, in coming here, have only burdened you with worry. I shall withdraw now."
Somehow, I had come intending to give comfort, yet I felt myself the one consoled.
I slipped out of my mothers' chamber. I glanced once in the direction of the hall where the Thing was in full swing—then turned my body the opposite way and slipped out of the longhouse.
At once, the moisture-laden mud clung to my footsteps.
I passed by the laborers shouting loudly and busily carrying goods, gave perfunctory replies to the Jarls who called out greetings to me...
I fled, hurrying my steps until I reached the outskirts of Uppsala, a place where the sea touched the land. Only when I came to the utterly unremarkable shore, scattered here and there with sand and gravel, did I finally let out a breath that had felt choked.
'Helgi, you must etch this into your mind. Taking up the sword means that, one day, you too may die upon another's sword.'
'Father, then could I simply not take up the sword?'
'Haha! You have the right of it, Helgi. It would be good, not taking up the sword—'
Upon this very spot, the conversation I had with my father was painted in the air. Bittersweet and refreshing, my father's laughing visage had been so happy.
'—Yet he who leads others must needs take up and wield the sword. For if he does not, his people will be harmed by those others who do bear the sword.'
'I see.'
'But whatever may come, never fear, my son. When this life ends at last, we shall all meet again in Valhalla, under Odin's banner.'
[Shiiing-]
The gleaming blade was cold.
My own two eyes, reflected upon that blade, were colder still.