Read Online Hrolf Kraki's Saga by Poul Anderson - Free Book Online Page A

tongue the rest can understand. As their numbers waxed, they spilled forth until they had overrun realms from the Elbe to the Rhine—and Britain as well, along with their Anglic and Jutish kinsmen. A few clung to the old country.
    One such kingdom was on the island of Als between Flensborg and Aabenraa Fjords. Its masters stemmed from both Odin and Frey, though they also had blood in them of the Wendish tribes who dwell eastward beyond Ironwood and talk like neither Danes nor Finns. Though doughty, they lacked great numbers of men and must plight faith and pay scot to the kings of Slesvik on the mainland.
    The last of these royal underlings hight Sigmund. He married a daughter of his overlord Hunding. She bore him a girl-child they named Olof, but no sons who lived past her own early death. This led Sigmund to raise the girl rather like a boy, take her on hunts, teach her weapon-play, tell her of warlike doings, let her listen while he talked with men. She grew harsh and haughty, scorned womanly skills, sometimes even went about carrying shield and byrnie, sword at belt and helm on head.
    Her father reached no high age either. When he died, her grandfather King Hunding of Slesvik feared a struggle for the seat which might lead to a breakaway from him. Therefore he pressed the Alsmen to take Olof for their queen. This was not wholly unheard of among Saxons; besides, the wiser chieftains agreed it was better than uproar. So it was done.
    Later Hunding died and
his
realm fell into disorder. Cunningly playing sides off against each other, Queen Olof became able to do what she wanted. Taking a man was not among those things. She was reckoned the best match in the North—if only because this island was well-placed for war and trade—but every suitor she sent away, and not very politely either.
    Her own folk did not like her much, finding her overbearing and niggardly. Still, she was not bad enough to rise up against, bearing in mind that she was the last of their royal house and hence surely under the ward of her forebears the gods.
    Matters had stood thus for several years when Helgi’s craft turned prows toward her kingdom.
    He had learned that she spent her summers on the eastern shore of the island. There she kept a dwelling, less a hall than a lodge and some outbuildings, the Little Belt before it and miles of greenwood behind. It was a stead where she could hunt, which she loved, and seldom have to give outsiders food or gifts, which she cared little to do.
    The house stood on a bluff looking widely over strand and water. Thus she reckoned on warning of ships in time to send after help or, at worst, flee down the road inland. Helgi lay to behind Lee Island across the Belt and waited for a fog. At that time of year he soon got it. The fleet crossed in single file, men stealthily rowing. Oft-times in that thick, dripping grayness, a steersman in the stern of one craft could not see the lookout in the bows of her follower. Ropes linked them. In the lead went the king. For pilot he had a fisherman who knew well every tide, current, skerry, and bight of these straits. They made landfall almost at their goal. Helgi sent warriors ashore and then cast anchor below the bluff
    The fog lifted quite suddenly toward evening—and there were those lean hulls, ablink with mail and spears, while armored men loafed grinning around the edge of the woods. They made no threat; and the mast of the foremost ship had been raised to bear at its top the white shield which betokens peace. Yet the queen was boxed in and outnumbered beyond hope.
    In stiff-faced calm she received the messengers. “Helgi Halfdansson, Dane-King, greets Olof Sigmundsdottir, Als-Queen, and will accept hospitality” was their word. She could only choose that which was safest, and bid him and his be her guests.
    They clattered up the strand-path and into the yard, youths boisterous as a sea-wind, toplofty as eagles. Olof waited in her high seat. Sunset light turned golden