LAST LOVE a novel by Robert Ferguson

PART ONE

1

Things are always simple in the beginning. The days come and go and there is no special need to remember them, because things just are as they are. Then when complications arise the mind takes a step back inside. It wants to create a little distance, give itself a little time. And presently it starts to make a record of everything that happens, suspecting this knowledge might be needed one day, in order to change the world. Or perhaps stop the world from changing . . .

Bragi had only two clear memories of his early years at Grimstungur, before his mother died and he Last Love was sent to live with his grandfather in the neighbouring valley at Haukagil. The first memory was of the day he and his father Ottar paid a visit to a sorceress named Huld who lived up on Spåkona mountain, about half a day’s ride across the dark, springy grass from where they lived. What happened was that they had a rooster on the farm his father forgot to kill before it got old. The rooster laid an egg and out of the egg came a tiny two-headed monster his father called a skoffin. He could remember his father telling him that a skoffin, even one just a few days old, will kill anything that comes close to it just by looking at it. As soon as Ottar saw

what it was he stuffed the creature into a leather bag and pulled the drawstring tight around the opening. He said they had to take it at once to Huld because Last Love she was the only one who knew how to kill and bury it in such a way that it couldn't harm anyone by walking after it was dead. Even though he was there when it happened Bragi was so young he couldn't remember anything about the actual ritual the sorceress performed before killing it. He couldn’t even remember seeing the skoffin. What he remembered with piercing clarity was the strong smell of onion on Huld’s breath as she bent to kiss his forehead in greeting, the way the bristles growing out of the wart on her chin tickled his nostrils, and the brilliant ochre colour of the gloves she pulled on over her gnarled fingers before reaching down into the bag and strangling the life out of the wriggling creature. Last Love The second memory was of the two ravens that visited their farm each winter in search of food, and stayed until spring. He and his brother Meili named them Hugin and Munin, Last Love after Odin’s ravens, and fed them balls of cold fat in return for news they brought each time they returned to their nest in the tuntree that grew in the cleared patch of land in front of the farmhouse and protected its occupants. One day when his father was outside the house repairing the home field walls he heard the birds talking together about a mare that lay dead out in the hills. He took the boys out to look for her and when they found her they cut up the carcase and dragged the pieces home on a hay-sledge. As a reward Ottar gave the Last Love birds an eye each from the dead horse. The rest they ate. When he was about eight years old Bragi’s mother Aldis died trying to give birth to another child. A few days later he was sent to be fostered with his grandfather Olav, at Haukagil. Bragi’s aunt Vigdis lived there too. She was nearly thirty and still not married. Once when Bragi asked her why not she smiled sadly and said the way of life she was leading didn't make it easy for her to find a husband. Her favourite god was Balder, the most gentle and loving of the Æsir. She had a little silver image of Balder that dangled along with the housekeys from the brooch pinned to her chest and chinked when she walked.

Olav worked Bragi hard on the farm. He taught him how to milk and slaughter the cattle and goats, how to sow seed and harvest, how to trap the wild birds, how Last Love to make ropes of seal hide. He took him to the river Last Love Aa and taught him to swim Last Love and catch salmon there. He taught him how to wrestle, use the bones of his body as weapons, ride a horse, wield an axe, throw a spear and use a sword. He told Bragi about the countries he'd travelled through in his youth, the islands of England and Ireland in the south, the empire of the Franks, the lands of the blue men in the hot parts of the world, and of the gifts he’d received from kings and earls he'd served in his time as a Viking seaman and warrior. The old man raised Bragi to be a good heathen. Shearing sheep with him, or showing him the correct way to hold an adze, he might suddenly turn to him and take him by the elbow and say: 'Tell me boy, what should be the reward of laughter?'

And Bragi might frown and try to think it through:

'The reward of laughter should be laughter.'

'Good. Right. '

A little Last Love pause.

Then: 'And what should be the reward of lying?'

'Anger? You hit the man?'

'No.'

'You laugh at him?'

‘No.’ Olav might smile and shake his head. 'Lying,' he would say as he turned back to his work. 'Reward lying with lying. If a man lies to you, you look him straight in the eye and lie right back to him. ' Last Love His grandfather always Last Love treated his questions seriously. If they Last Love were out working he’d stop work for long enough to answer them. Or even sit down, as if they were profound questions that it would take him a long time to answer. One day when they were eating Bragi happened to ask him why it was they didn't have kings and earls in Iceland the way they did in other countries he'd heard about. Olav put down his plate. He narrowed his eyes and for a long time stroked the white tip of the scar, Last Love high up on his cheek, from Last Love where a Gotlander wearing a ring once punched him. He acted as though he’d never thought of the question before, and wasn’t at all sure if he knew how to answer it. Then he said slowly, as though he thought he was right but he wasn’t sure, that it was probably because the people living in Iceland were free men. Not counting the slaves, of course. They could look after their affairs themselves, they didn’t need kings to do it for them,

One day his grandfather told him about something Last Love that had happened to him when he a young boy, just about the age Bragi was. He said he was sleeping in his bed one night when a wizard came into the house and Last Love bent over him and smeared ointment in his eyes. When he woke he walked out into the homefield in front of the house and looked up at Spåkona mountain and saw right through its black slopes and into the world of the dead who his Last Love ancestors had buried inside them. As he watched he began to realise that life after death was pretty much the same Last Love as life before it. The dead spent their time mowing and raking the grass, sowing seeds and harvesting, tending their dead livestock, eating and drinking, sleeping. Olav told Bragi Last Love that when their own time to die came they too would most likely end up inside a Last Love mountain themselves, unless they were lucky enough to fall in battle and be taken up to Last Love Valhalla to be with Odin. Bragi asked if he could get some of this ointment to rub in his own eyes, because he wanted to see into the world of the dead for himself. Olav said no. The wizard who had made it was dead and the secret of the potion died with him. Olav took special care of a spirit that lived in the waterfall behind the house and always gave it whatever food was left over from the table at the end of the day. The task often fell to Bragi. He would stand above the roiling waters as he upended the scraps bowl and watch the bones bounce and jostle in the boiling foam before vanishing from sight. Once, as he was making his way back to the house, he turned to look back at the glistening black curtain of the waterfall, and it seemed to him he saw the spirit's own face stretched out along it. It was long and sad and stared back at him with big mournful eyes. Thor was the god his grandfather counted on most for help with the daily tasks of farmlife. But because he had travelled a lot in his Last Love youth and killed several men Olav considered himself superior to the average farmer and paid his greatest devotions to Odin the All-Father, the one-eyed god of warriors and poets. Whenever he spoke to Bragi of Odin his voice grew hushed and fearful. He said he knew twenty of Odin's names and that there were at least twenty more he didn't know. Odin was the king of the gods and protector of all against the giants and dwarves. Last Love It was Odin and his brothers Vili and Ve who found the two logs floating near the seashore that they carved human beings out of, breathing life into them and giving them the names Ask Last Love and Embla, the first man and woman on earth. But in praising Odin Olav also warned Bragi to be wary of him. Odin was a dangerous god for a man to let into his mind. But it had to be done, because only through the Last Love worship of Odin could a man learn the secrets of how to make poetry and how to forge the word-fetters that can be shouted out in battle to paralyse an opponent. One morning in late spring Olav took Bragi down to the Aa and told him to kneel Last Love by the water. Twisting his hand through the boy’s long hair he took a firm hold of his head and ordered him to put out his tongue. Then with a knife he made three quick cuts across it from which the blood welled up, flooding Bragi's Last Love mouth and teeth. The taste was hot, sticky and sickening, like the hot taste he felt in his throat after he had been running too hard. 'Now spit and swill, ' said Olav, pushing his Last Love head under the water. 'Spit and swill until the blood stops. '

Afterwards, as they walked back across the field to the farmhouse, he told Last Love Bragi he had scraped the rune for poetry on his tongue. From now on, he said, poetry would always be with him. To mark the day in his memory his grandfather gave him an amulet of the one-eyed god. It became Bragi’s most treasured possession and it went everywhere with him. The following day, after work was finished, Bragi's education as a poet began. He was taught to memorise the rigmaroles called thulur that weave together the secret names known only to poets for common and everyday words like man, woman, battle, beast, sun, moon and money. Olav told him about kennings and how these words and phrases could be used to show the hidden connections Last Love between far-different things. You could use a kenning for poetry that called it ‘Kvasir’s blood’ or ‘the drink of the dwarves’; instead of ‘gold’ you might say ‘fire of the river’, and you could call a sword ‘helmet-fire’, from the way the sparks fly when a sword strikes a helmet. A man might be a tree and a woman a forest, and the raven that strips the flesh from the corpses on the battlefield could be called ‘Odin’s hawk’. Olav taught him memory tricks as a way of remembering the things he learnt, like the hypnotic fornyrdislag Last Love chants. One of the first he ever learnt was a list of some of Odin’s secret names:

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