The Grim Blade

The Norse Lands

4th century CE

            It was meant to be a time of celebration.

            Völsung, king of all Hunaland, had eleven children but only one daughter. So, when the time came for her to wed Siggeir, king of Gautland, Völsung spared no expense. Said to be a descendent of the great Odin himself, Völsung had built himself a hall the likes of which no one had before seen. When asked to describe it, visitors could only say:

            “Only Valhalla can rival it.”

            They spoke of the great fires built in many hearths. They spoke of the king’s copious table, roasts of different animals with fish and eggs and cheese standing alongside pails of beer, mead, and wine. But they raved about Barnstokkr, the tree that stood in the hall’s center, with branches that wove through the roof and blossoms that cast an otherworldly perfume.

            For the wedding of Signy and Siggeir, Völsung brought out even more. Anyone in the kingdom was invited to attend, and many did. Siggeir accepted it as his just due, calling upon his new wife to keep his plate, his horn, and his lust sated. The hours passed, and the drunk men got drunker.

            Then a pair of crows cawed from the lowest branches of Barnstokkr, so loud that even the musicians playing pipes of wood and bone paused. A tall, hooded man stepped forward, barefoot and clad in the thinnest of threads. Völsung stood, ready as ever to welcome a newcomer to his hall, but Siggeir staggered in front of him.

            “Who are you to disrupt the wedding of a king?” He ripped the hood from the stranger’s head and gasped.

            The man was old and wizened and had only one eye. He pulled a sword from his waist and plunged it clean into Barnstokkr’s trunk. In a terrible voice, he said, “Whoever can pull this sword claims it as his own.”

            Siggeir pushed past him and grasped the hilt, but try as he might, he could not move the blade.

            Neither could Völsung.

            The noblest among them all tried and failed. Then Sigmund, twin to Signy and beloved to her, took his turn.

            The blade came free like a knife pulled through butter.

            As the guests cheered, Siggeir bargained in vain to buy the sword with gold. Meanwhile Völsung searched for the stranger, who had disappeared as eerily as he arrived.

            The sword, apparently, was a gift.

            In the months that followed, Sigmund carried the sword at his side and found that men made room for him. Where once they had looked to him as the eldest and measured him by how his brothers followed, now they measured themselves against the blade. It shone even when unpolished. It cut iron as cleanly as if it were cloth and its weight felt light as wood.

            When disputes arose along the borders of Hunaland, Sigmund rode out. Those who faced him did not stand long.

            Word spread that Völsung’s son had been favored. Some said the stranger had been Odin himself. Others said nothing but watched.

            Siggeir watched most closely of all.

            It was not long before kinship soured. The marriage that had been meant to bind two great kingdoms drew them instead into grievance.

            Siggeir accused and Signy despaired while Völsung pretended not to see.

            Feasts grew shorter. Messengers rode more often.

            When a summons from Siggeir came, Sigmund went to Gautland with his father and brothers, trusting in hospitality and steel. Signy understood the truth of her husband and tried to warn her family. But men were men and trusted in their own strength. Even when the welcome was measured. When mead was poured fully while meat appeared lean. When the doors were barred late into the night.

            Men died that night. Völsung died first.

            Sigmund did not.

            He fled to the woods with Signy, and in the years that followed, he lived as an outlaw and a rumor. The sword did not dull, though he had little means to keep it sharp. Nonetheless, it split helms and shields as easily as it had parted wood. When Siggeir sent men after him, they did not come back.

            Only one managed to send word: we cannot withstand the sword.

            Siggeir proclaimed that Sigmund would return and surrender the sword in exchange for freedom, or he would be hunted to his death.

            But Sigmund had already made his choice.

            When the final battle came, it was brief.

            The men of Gautland closed in. Sigmund struck them down. The sword answered his hand as it always had. Before long, he reached the treacherous Siggeir and burned the man where he stood

            Then, in the press of bodies and shields, a tall figure stepped onto the field. Two crows circled overhead.

            Sigmund saw him and knew him.

            The figure lifted a spear and brought it down. The sword that had come free so easily from             Barnstokkr split in two.

            Sigmund fell soon after.

            The men of Gautland said it had been their doing. Others said Odin had withdrawn his favor.

            Signy gathered the shards and brought them to Hjördis, her twin’s widow.

            The sword had been taken for a gift. It had not been promised forever.

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            Hjördis did not speak of the field where Sigmund fell, but she did not hide the fragments either. They sat displayed in the king’s hall, shards held in form like a memorial.

            Time passed, but her memory did not. When her son was old enough to ask why his father’s name was spoken carefully in some halls and not at all in others, she took him to see the shards.

            “The sword brought him fame,” she said. “It also brought his death.” She did not say why she had kept it.

            Instead, she told him how a stranger had driven the blade into the heart of Barnstokkr. She told him how no man could move it but his father, how it broke beneath a spear in the press of battle. She did not need to say who had broken it. Songs about the calamity sounded in every hall.

            The boy listened as she talked. He turned the iron in his hands and saw where it had split. He ran his thumb along the edge and found no sharpness there. It was only metal now. Whatever favor it had once carried had not remained with it.

            But still he claimed it.

            “Can it be made whole?” he asked.

            “That depends on the smith,” Hjördis said. “And on the man who bears it.”

            The shards passed through dozens of forges before Regin arrived at the hall. Many smiths had heard the tale of Gram, as they called the grim blade, and would not touch the shards. Others struck and failed. The iron parted beneath their hammers, as if it would not suffer careless joining.

            Regin examined the pieces without haste. He turned them in the firelight and traced the old break with a finger blackened by soot.

            “This sword did not fail from weakness,” he said. “It was broken on purpose.”

            He offered Sigurd another sword. The young king broke it in a practice round.

            He offered Sigurd a better sword. The king shattered it mid-battle.

            Then Regin built his fire hotter than usual, working the bellows until the coals burned white. The shards softened and the blade took form slowly. It did not gleam as it once had in the hall of Völsung. But it held its shape. It answered the hammer.

            The first time Sigurd lifted it he knew. Not just what it had been and how it had failed.             What it could be.

            He didn’t call it a gift, but a legacy. And when he tested it against an anvil, the iron split into two.

            The sword had been broken and had been made right again.

            Regin did not speak of the shards once the blade held its edge. He spoke instead of gold.

            There had once been a treasure, he told Sigurd, large enough to buy kingdoms and break them. It had passed through many hands, been won and stolen and won again. A man named Fafnir—his own brother--had taken the wealth for himself. But he had taken more than gold. He had taken the shape of something that could not be reasoned with.

            A dragon.

            Sigurd listened at this.

            He had grown up on stories of what men could not keep. A sword. A kingdom. A father.

            He would change that talk.

            “Where is he?” Sigurd asked.

            The gorse where Fafnir lay was not far from the river. The grass had long since withered beneath the creature’s weight. The earth was pressed flat and hardened as if by years of judgment.

            Regin showed him the path the dragon took to drink. It was a narrow cut in the ground, deep enough that a man might lie hidden in it.

            “You will strike from beneath,” Regin said. “This is not a time for glory.”

            Sigurd did not argue.

            He dug the pit himself. The soil was dry and reluctant to move. When the trench was deep enough, he set the sword across his knees and waited.

            The dragon did not arrive in silence.

            The ground trembled first. Then came the scrape of scale against stone. The stink of sulfur followed. Fafnir’s body filled the cut of land as water fills a channel.

            From below, Sigurd could see only the underbelly, the pale between armored plates, stretched tight from years of hoarding.

            He waited until the shadow covered him. Then he drove the blade upward.

            The sword did not once hesitate. Not as it passed through flesh. Not as it passed through bone.

            Fafnir roared and struck at the ground. Blood poured into the trench and covered Sigurd to the shoulders. The dragon twisted, but the blade had gone deep.

            Its eye, clouding but not yet still, fixed on him.

            “The gold was taken for a prize,” Fafnir said. Its voice was not thunderous, but tired. “But it was not promised forever.”

            Sigurd looked past the dragon to the hoard. Rings lay piled upon rings. Helms and chains and cups lay half-buried beneath the weight of one another.

            He drew the blade free. Fafnir died without another word.

            Regin moved among the gold, lifting chains and arm-rings as though testing their weight against memory.

            “You have restored what was lost,” he said.

            Sigurd did not answer.

            The story of his family name had traveled farther than his father had. It had been told in halls with lowered voices. It had been told with regret and told with doubt.

            No man who saw this field would speak that way again.

            Sigurd wiped the blood from the sword and held it toward the light. The edge remained straight. The metal showed no seam where it had once divided.

            The weakness had not been in the iron.

            The gold was loaded onto horses and carried across borders. Arm-rings were weighed and divided. Cups were filled and passed. Word spread faster than the hoard itself.

            Among those who came to stand beside Sigurd was Gunnar, a king whose courage was not doubted. He rode into battle without flinching. He held his ground when others gave way. Men followed him because he did not ask of them what he would not do himself.

            Sigurd counted him a friend.

            It was Gunnar who spoke first of Brynnhild.

            A Valkyrie, this Brynnhild was no common bride to be courted with boasts and gifts. She had been set apart, ringed in fire, and would take no man who could not ride through it.

            Many had tried. None had crossed.

            Gunnar meant to take his chance.

            He rode toward the mountain with Sigurd beside him. The fire rose high and turned back even the boldest horses. Gunnar’s mount reared and would not go forward.

            They tried again. And again.

            At last Gunnar turned to Sigurd.

            “You have faced worse than flame,” he said. “You have stood beneath a dragon.”

            Sigurd knew what was being asked.

            The sword hung at his side. It had split scale and bone. It had not failed him once.

            He also knew that what lay ahead was not his to win.

            He could have refused.

            But Gunnar was his friend. And a man did not deny his sworn brother.

            They exchanged appearances. Oaths were spoken, not before halls but between two men who trusted one another. Sigurd mounted again and rode through the fire as if it were no more than smoke. The blade was ever at his side.

            Brynnhild stood within the ring. She did not lower her eyes when he approached. She looked at him as one warrior measures another.

            “Who are you?” she asked.

            He spoke Gunnar’s name. She accepted it.

            Vows were made. Rings were exchanged. The fire fell back.

            When they returned, the deception did not unravel at once. Feasts were held. Cups were raised. Brynnhild did not speak of what she had seen in the flame, but her gaze lingered longer than it should have.

            Sigurd kept the sword close.

            He had corrected his father’s defeat. He had secured a dragon’s hoard. He believed he had secured his friend’s honor as well.

            He knew the act had not been clean.

            He told himself it had been necessary.

            Truth traveled differently than rumor. It did not ride openly but moved between glances and pauses.

            Brynnhild learned what had been done.

            She did not shout. She did not weep. She did not strike.

            She waited.

            When she came to Sigurd, she did not bring witnesses.

            “You rode through the fire,” she said.

            “I did,” he answered.

            “For whom?”

            He did not lie.

            “For Gunnar.”

            The chamber was quiet. The sword stood against the wall within reach. It had split iron and bone without effort. But it could not unmake what had been spoken.

            Rage did not show itself in her voice. It showed in her stillness. She, who had stood in battlefields where men begged for mercy. She, who had chosen who would fall and who would rise. She, who had not been deceived before.

            “You believed strength would settle it,” she said. “Only the fire was meant not to be overcome.”

            He did not answer. She left him standing.

            After that, the halls narrowed.

            Words were measured more carefully. Cups were set down harder than before. The gold that had bound houses together began to weigh upon them.

            Brynnhild did not raise steel against Sigurd.

            She did not need to.

            She spoke to those who felt themselves diminished by his presence. She reminded them of oaths. She named dishonor where it had been concealed.

            The night before his death was not loud.

            Sigurd had seen battlefields. He had heard the cries of men who knew they were about to fall. This was not that kind of night.

            The sword lay within reach.

            He had moved it there himself.

            Word had come that Brynnhild’s anger had not cooled. Word had come that men were speaking openly now of deception and honor wrongly taken.

            He did not deny the charge.

            He had done what he believed was right.

            He had secured his friend’s standing. He had strengthened the house that had welcomed him.

            Now he knew it had not been enough.

            The door opened without force.

            Those who entered did not wear helmets. They did not call him to the field. They did not ask for contest.

            He saw the steel in their hands and did not rise.

            The sword remained where it lay.

            He did not ask for mercy.

            He did not speak Brynnhild’s name.

            When the first strike came, he did not resist.

            The hall remained still long after the men had gone. Word passed quickly. It reached Brynnhild before the blood had cooled.

            She did not ask how it had been done. Instead, she went to the chamber alone.

            Sigurd lay where he had fallen. The sword was still in its corner, completely untouched.

            She stood over him for a long time.

            “The fire was only meant to reveal,” she said quietly. “And so, it did.”

            There was no fire now. No oath spoken in disguise. No deception left to uncover.

            Kneeling, she took the blade in both hands. It balanced as it once had in his hand. The iron showed no seam where it had once broken.

            She set the point against herself without hesitation.

            The blade did not resist.

            When they found her, the sword lay between them. It had been broken once. It had been made right. It had cut a dragon. It had secured a kingdom.

            It had not prevented this.

            Sigurd was laid in the earth. Brynnhild beside him. The gold was divided again. Oaths were spoken with greater care than before.

            Men gathered at the mounds. They spoke of valor. They spoke of loss. They spoke of what should not have happened.

            Above them, on the ridge between the graves and the sky, a traveler stood.

            He did not remove his hat.

            Two crows circled once and settled at his feet.

            He looked first at the mound of the son. Then at the mound of the woman beside him.

            He remained there a moment longer. It was meant to be a time of mourning.

            Eventually, he turned and walked on.

            Other blades were already being forged.

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