The Midgard Serpent

by James L. Nelson

  Halfdan still did not speak.

  Oh, is this the silly game we’re to play? Odd thought. For a moment he considered playing as well, refusing to speak first. But one of them had to stop being childish, so he figured it might as well be him.

  “King Halfdan, good morning,” Odd said. Halfdan gave a courteous nod of the head, acknowledging the greeting, but not returning it. Odd remained quiet. He felt that he had done more than his share of the talking.

  “Odd Thorgrimson,” Halfdan said at last. “Amundi. All of you. This is a strange situation. It seems you are in my home, and I am out here.”

  “It seems so,” Odd said.

  “Yes,” said Halfdan. “So, might I ask that you leave my home, and allow me and my men to come in? We’ve had a long march.” Odd could hear the unspoken parts of that as clearly as the words Halfdan had said. You didn’t expect to see me, did you? And now you don’t know what to do.

  “I don’t think so, King Halfdan,” Odd said. “I think we have a lot to discuss — you, me, the hauldar and the others. Much to discuss, agreements to reach. I wish we might have done so under better circumstances.”

  “I imagine you do,” Halfdan said.

  “We stand ready,” Odd said. “Ready to talk, or whatever you wish. But until then we’ll remain here. Your wives, your children, they’re safe enough, I give my word. But they’ll remain here as well.”

  The words were meant as a threat, or a warning, neither very subtle, and Halfdan took them as such, though he seemed neither threatened nor warned. Instead he smirked, just a bit, just enough to ensure that the expression was clearly seen by the men on the wall.

  “Very well,” Halfdan said. “I’m sure the servants have already shown you where the good wine and the silver are hidden, so you don’t need my help there. Good day.” With that he pulled the reins of his horse to one side and the animal turned and began walking away, presenting its wide posterior to the men watching. The hird parted neatly and let Halfdan ride down the center of their two columns and then fell in behind him, riding away. In the distance Odd could see the tents set up on the open ground half a mile from the wall. The smoke from cook fires was rising up into the pale blue sky.

  “Well, that wasn’t exactly what I was expecting,” Hakon said, breaking the silence.

  “No,” Amundi said. “Halfdan’s too smart to do what we expect. There’s no guessing what he’ll do. So we have to be ready for…whatever it is.”

  How they might make ready they did not know. They had never discussed what they would do in a situation such as this because they had never envisioned being in this situation. But here it was, and now they needed to scramble for a response.

  The top of the wall was not the place to do that. Not in the presence of the men standing sentry. They did not need to learn that their leaders had been taken by surprise and did not know what to do next. So Odd and the rest climbed back down to the ground where they could speak with some degree of privacy, and deal with this crisis in the most logical way.

  There was a small fire ring nearby with benches arranged in a circle around it, and it seemed as good a place as any for a council of war. Better than a table, certainly, because there was no head at which to sit, and Odd wanted any further decisions to be arrived at mutually. He led the way over to the ring and seated himself and the other men sat as well.

  “Very well,” Odd said, by way of starting. “Halfdan is out there. We’re in here. What next?”

  “For us, we just keep doing what we’re doing now, mostly,” Amundi said. “We’ll keep vigilant watch, get the blacksmiths here to start making more spears. Search for more weapons…there must be some stored around here…maybe start making up more arrows. Get stones up on the walls that we can throw down. Get as prepared as we can to defend this place. I don’t see what more we can do. It seems to me that anything beyond that will be Halfdan’s move.”

  Heads nodded. Thorgeir Herjolfsson spoke next.

  “We have to find out what Halfdan wants. Or, I should say, what he’s willing to accept. We know what he wants. He wants his hall back and he wants us put down. But is he willing to talk? Make some sort of deal? Or will he only be satisfied if we’re all dead?”

  “That’s the question,” Odd said. “If he’ll only be satisfied with our deaths, then, speaking for myself, I don’t mean to make it easy for him.”

  At that the others nodded again. Odd had meant to add that if any man there wished to make some separate agreement with Halfdan, to find some way for him and his men to be set free from this trap, then he, Odd, would not hold it against him, or think less of him in any way. But he could see that such an offer would be an insult. None of these men would march off and leave their fellows to fight to the death. He just hoped that the warriors under their command, the men on the walls, felt the same way.

  “I must say, Halfdan did not seem too interested in talking,” Amundi pointed out.

  “Trying to rattle us,” Ragi said. “Unnerve us. He hopes to get us fighting amongst ourselves.”

  “He can play that game of waiting and we can too,” Vifil said. “We have plenty of food here. Three wells that I counted, so we won’t run out of water. We have hostages. We can wait a long time for Halfdan to decide what he’ll do next.”

  And so it was agreed. They would wait. Let Halfdan decide when he had enough of living in his tent and was willing to talk.

  With that decision made they set about preparing for the fight they knew would come. The warriors remained on the walls, watch upon watch, and the people in the compound went about their new, siege-induced routine. The sound of hammers banging iron rang through the air as the blacksmiths turned out more spear points. Weapons were cleaned and sharpened, inventories of food and drink made, defenses organized. But Halfdan did not come.

  He did not come the next day, or the day after that, either. Odd could feel the uncertainty grow, and with it tension and fear. Waiting. Not knowing. Nothing was more corrosive to morale than that.

  And then something changed. Odd was inspecting the blacksmiths’ work when he heard voices on the wall, the sentries calling out with an urgency they had not shown before, and he set down the spear point and started moving for the ladder with no conscious thought. He took the rungs fast and stepped onto the wall.

  “Riders coming, Master Odd,” the nearest sentry said, pointing. Odd followed his finger. A group of horsemen were approaching. He could see their mail shining and, bobbing up and down, a bright spot of color that he took to be Halfdan’s banner at the end of a pole. As far as he could tell from that distance it was the same group of riders that had come that first morning.

  As he watched he became aware of a great swell of noise behind him. He looked down at the grounds below and saw all the men who were not on the wall scrambling to get armed and up to the places they had been ordered to go. It was not orderly, to be sure, but it was not utter chaos either, and that was good.

  Amundi, Ragi and Thorgeir came clambering up the ladder and stepped out onto the wall, their eyes fixed on the riders who were clearly visible now.

  “Halfdan, looks like,” Thorgeir said.

  “Come to surrender, no doubt,” Amundi said.

  The horsemen came to within fifty feet of the gate, the same well-equipped warriors of the hird, with Halfdan in the lead. The guards reined to a stop, their horses in two neat lines, as Halfdan approached.

  “Odd Thorgrimson, I’m glad to see you,” Halfdan said. “Amundi, Ragi. Thorgeir.” He nodded his greeting to each man.

  “Good morning, King Halfdan,” Odd said, the only one of them to reply. “Why are we honored with your visiting us?”

  “Actually,” Halfdan said, “it was not so much me who wanted to visit. There’s someone else wishing to greet you. Someone you know. Know well, I think.”

  He turned in the saddle and nodded toward the guards. One man near the center of the line nudged his horse to a walk and rode up to Halfdan’s side, and as he drew clos
er Odd recognized him as Onund Jonsson, captain of Halfdan’s hird, a man Odd had known for many years. Onund had someone on the saddle in front of him, a child, clearly. Odd squinted and looked closely at the child’s familiar features, the round face, the long tousled blond hair. He felt his stomach twist and thought he might vomit. He could hear his breath, loud, as he sucked in air. He felt his fists curl tight enough to be painful.

  “Ah, you recognize her!” Halfdan said. “I myself haven’t seen her since she was a baby. I would have never known her. But you? Of course you would recognize her. Hallbera. Your very own sister.”

  Chapter Twelve

  In the same year the aforementioned worshipful

  King Æthelwulf freed the tenth part of his kingdom

  from every royal service and tribute, and offered it up

  as an everlasting grant to God the One and Three…

  Asser’s Life of King Alfred

  King Æthelwulf was the pole star, and all the others were minor points of light whirling around him. That was how it had seemed to Felix when he first arrived at the Royal Court at Winchester, and it seemed that way to him still. Æthelwulf was the North Star — not just there, but in all of Wessex — and the rest were little gleams in the blackness, growing less and less significant the further from the pole star they were found.

  Mon Dieu, he thought, and shook his head at the madness.

  It was not new to him, this position of the king in the royal firmament. Felix had been sent from the court of Charles the Bald of West Frankia, and in that kingdom it was Charles who occupied the place of the pole star. But the Frankish court had never seemed quite so mad as that of Wessex.

  There were always many of these points of light in the royal household — ealdormen, thegns, various court functionaries and hangers-on, stately and serious men, comely, richly dressed women — but now, with Æthelwulf’s departure imminent, there were more, far more, lighting up the court until it blazed. Men from all over Wessex and beyond, drawn in by the irresistible pull of power, as if dragged there by chains. All spinning around the king. But he, Felix, spun closer than any of them.

  That was the image that Felix saw in his mind. The stars in a circle spinning around the North Star, and he himself so close to that pole star that they seemed to almost touch, his circle was much smaller than the others, his orbit much faster. And he was not turned inward, not looking to the North Star. He was turned outward, out toward the others, standing like a sentry between them and the king.

  The image was metaphorical, of course, but on some days, such as that one, it seemed very literal indeed. The crowd of nobles in their bright, fine linen and furs and decked out in jewels, swirling through the hall and the grounds, circling in for a word with Æthelwulf, a final grant of a favor or the hope of being bequeathed this or that. Thegns arriving with their retinues, their house guards, all needing food and drink and stables and whatever else to which they thought themselves entitled.

  “Ah, Felix, there you are!”

  Felix looked up, unsure if he had heard the words or if they were just an echo in his head. He had been hearing them all day.

  “Lord Baldred, bon jour, I’m honored to see you,” Felix said with a shallow bow. Baldred was one of the wealthiest of the thegns in Hampshire, near the border of Sussex, and an overbearing, pompous fool.

  “Felix, I need to see the king before he’s off, and it must be soon, do you hear?”

  “Of course, Lord, though King Æthelwulf is quite pressed, as you might imagine. At the moment he is attending a private mass.”

  That was actually true: Æthelwulf attended mass daily, often with the bishop as celebrant. The king was, among other things, a pious man.

  “Pressed? I’m sure,” Baldred said. “And I’m sure in your Frankish courts you might put off a man of influence such as myself, but that won’t answer in Wessex, not at all, do you see? I must have my audience. Pray see to it.” With that Baldred turned and walked off, his fine cloak like a flag fluttering behind him.

  Felix watched him walk away. You may have an audience with my posterior, but you’ll get no higher than that, monsieur, he thought, and that was all the time he had for Lord Baldred. By the time he looked back down at the parchment in his hand he had already forgotten the man.

  Six years earlier Felix had arrived at Æthelwulf’s court, sent there by his former master, the king of West Frankia, Charles the Bald. Felix had long before proven his intelligence, loyalty and organizational skill in Charles’s court, and so Charles had dispatched him to bring order and competence to the court of his friend King Æthelwulf. Felix had begun his tenure as Æthelwulf’s notary, taking charge of his correspondence, but his realm had expanded until he seemed to be responsible for all aspects of keeping the royal court functioning properly.

  Which was really why Charles had sent Felix in the first place. He had sent him as a favor, thinking that Æthelwulf could use a man of his experience, a man who had no stake in the political machinations of Wessex. And he had also sent him because Charles was not averse to the idea of having eyes and even a voice inside the court of the most powerful kingdom in England.

  Felix looked up from the list in his hands and scanned the bustle in the great hall, the line of servants like ants carrying food and rolling barrels of wine out to the courtyard. He looked down at the list once more, a list of all the things that Æthelwulf would need for the arduous trip to Frankia, which was bound to take a week or two.

  The sailors, Felix knew, survived on dried fish or salted beef and coarse, unleavened bread. But that would not do for the king and his entourage. In truth, Felix admitted, it would not do for him, either.

  He ran his eyes down the list, item after item: fresh beef, rabbits living and otherwise, ducks likewise, venison, fresh carrots and greens, bags and bags of bread which would be as unlike the sailors’ bread as the king’s silk tunic was to the sailors’ oiled shirts. A third of the items on the list had a small X beside them to confirm they had been loaded aboard one wagon or another.

  “See here,” Felix said, looking up at the man who, during his brief discussion with Baldred, had stood fidgeting beside him. Felix’s English had been good when he left Frankia; now it was better than most native speakers’, save for a few Frankish words he still used reflexively, and a trace of an accent which he knew the servants mocked behind his back. “It says here there were six barrels of wine, but I saw only five go past.”

  “You sure?” the steward said, looking down at the list as if it might do some magical thing. “I thought I counted six.”

  “Pray, count again,” Felix said, and to himself added, You thieving bastard…

  The steward nodded and hurried off and Felix had no doubt he would discover his “mistake” and see that there was a sixth barrel on the wagon. There was some pilfering he could tolerate, and some he could not catch, but he would not risk having Æthelwulf and his party come up short on wine.

  He rolled up the list and headed for the big doors through which the line of servants was snaking, the steward’s men checking off lists of their own as they passed. The courtyard, incredibly, was even more chaotic than the great hall. A line of wagons ran from the doorway through which Felix stepped all the way up to the gates in the massive stone wall that surrounded the royal manor, a small, self-contained town within the larger town of Winchester.

  More wagons stood off to the side, but those were not rough carts built to haul barrels or heavy sacks. They were high-wheeled and lightly constructed, made to carry the nobility over the countryside in as much comfort as was attainable, which admittedly was not much.

  They would be making the trek to Hamtun, about twenty miles distant, down a road built centuries ago by the Romans. The road had clearly been a magnificent thing in its day: wide and paved over with carefully fitted stones and slightly arched to shed rain. There were such roads in Frankia too, and throughout most of Europe. Felix knew a little about the Romans, mostly from the remnants of
their civilization that still stood and the ancient stories he had heard, many of which he thought were no more than children’s tales, but he imagined that the roads had been kept in good order while Rome still ruled the world.

  But, alas, road repair had gone the way of Pax Romana. Now great gaps existed in the paving where folk had plucked stones out to use for one purpose or another. In other places time and weather had eaten away at the surface, revealing the layers of pebbles and sand which the Romans had meticulously laid down to support the stones.

  Magnificent. Far better than anything anyone would be willing to do in present times, even if they knew how. And damaged as the old road was, it had been maintained after a fashion and so was still better than any that were English-built. Given the fine weather and the tolerable road Felix did not think it would take more than two days for the train of wagons to cover that distance. Three if they were unlucky.

  But first he had to see it loaded, organized and well manned. He looked around the grounds. Dozens of men-at-arms were standing in clusters or sitting on benches, most with cups in their hands. These were the house guards who had come with their masters, the ealdormen and thegns who came to pay respect to the king and ask those last favors.

  There was a keen sense of urgency among them. Æthelwulf, king of Wessex, was bound for Rome, off on a magnificent pilgrimage to meet with Pope Benedict III. It was unprecedented, as far as Felix knew. And, he was sure, it was a very bad idea.

  The pilgrimage itself was not unprecedented. English kings had made the journey to Rome before. But they had been kings who were in exile, driven from their thrones by more powerful rivals, or kings who, worn down by consideration or fearful of assassination, had handed power over to their successors and then made the long journey to live out their final days in the footsteps of the Apostles.

  But no king that Felix knew of had ever gone to Rome while he still ruled his kingdom, with the expectation that he would return to resume his reign. Æthelwulf was leaving his eldest son, Æthelbald, to be king of Wessex in his stead, and his next oldest boy, Æthelberht, to be king of Kent. When he returned, Æthelwulf expected his sons to hand the kingdoms back to him.