The Midgard Serpent

by James L. Nelson

  So they made ready. They moved quietly, explaining to the men how this would go — once Odd was talking with Halfdan then the gates would fly open and the men inside would come screaming out, weapons in hand, shields on arms. If they hit hard and hit fast then there was a good chance they could roll right over Halfdan’s unprepared men.

  The sentries were left to walk the tops of the walls, the smoke from the cooking fires inside the compound still rising up into the blue sky. The smiths still hammered away at their forges. Halfdan and his men would see no change from that morning; they would not see the two hundred men standing silent and grim behind the heavy oak door.

  The sun was nearing its high point when all was ready, the men in place, each of the freemen at the head of those warriors he had brought with him. They stood in two columns behind the doors, shuffling in the dirt and seeking firm footing to launch themselves off. They cleared their throats and yawned in nervous anticipation. The worst part, the waiting.

  “Riders coming!” the sentry called out from the top of the wall and Odd saw some men jump in surprise. Odd turned and looked from Amundi to Ragi and Vifil and the others. He nodded to each in turn and each nodded back. Then he walked quickly over to the wall and scaled the ladder that led to the top. He stood on that section above the gate where there was no palisade so he could see the country out beyond the walls.

  He could see Halfdan’s camp, the various tendrils of smoke from a dozen small fires, the white dots of the tents. He thought he saw men standing in a line as if ready for battle, but he could not be certain. It was what he would expect to see. Halfdan was no dim-wit. He would guess what the men in the compound were planning and prepare for it.

  Odd turned and looked down at the armed men on the ground behind him. “Something’s going on, I don’t know what,” he said as loudly as he dared. “Stand ready, but don’t move until you have my signal.” The men nodded their understanding and Odd turned back toward the enemy outside.

  The riders were still far off, half a mile at least, but Odd was certain it was Halfdan and his guard. A small cloud of dust trailed after them as they approached over the dry, trampled earth. Whether or not they had little Hallbera with them he could not tell from that distance. It did not matter.

  Without a word, without looking back, Odd stepped around the edge of the palisade and stood on top of the earthen wall that sloped at a near vertical pitch down to the ground. He unbuckled his sword belt and set Blood-letter and his seax down on the wall’s flat top, then half climbed, half slid down the slope. He heard the sentry on the wall above say, “Master Odd?” but he did not reply.

  His feet hit the ground and he pushed off the wall and began walking quickly toward the riders who were closing the distance. He heard the sentry call, “Master Odd?” once more, a bit louder, a bit more emphatic, but the man had no way of knowing whether or not this was part of the plan. Odd picked up the pace. He and Halfdan were quickly converging.

  Behind him he heard more sounds of confusion, words passed back and forth, but he could not hear what was said. He was a few hundred feet from the gate already, and by the time Amundi and the others figured out what was happening he would have already given himself up to Halfdan.

  And that was how it had to be. There would be no surprise attack, no desperate battle. Odd would not allow anyone, save for himself, to die because of his mistake.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Night was in place,

  the Norns there came,

  to the highborn they

  destiny pronounced.

  The Poetic Edda

  Thorgrim Night Wolf kicked his son Harald awake. It was something he had done countless times before, but this time he kicked him harder than was necessary. Quite a bit harder.

  Even as his foot was in motion he knew he was going to kick the boy harder than need be. On one level he felt bad about it, though he seemed unable to stop himself. On another level he wished he had kicked him harder still.

  Harald was sleeping half curled on his side, mouth open, long blond hair in the sand. It was a warm night and Harald had no fur or blanket over him and Thorgrim suspected he had not so much gone to sleep as passed out. The top of Thorgrim’s soft shoe connected with Harald’s gut and Harald’s eyes shot open and his mouth opened wider and he doubled up more around Thorgrim’s foot. Thorgrim watched the rapid change of expressions on Harald’s face: surprise to confusion, to understanding that someone had kicked him, then anger and then, looking up and seeing who it was, a sheepish confusion once again.

  “Daylight,” Thorgrim said. “Get up.”

  Harald nodded and pushed himself to a sitting position and then up to his feet, a move that was made harder by the soft sand and Harald’s general unsteadiness just then. It was daylight only in a manner of speaking; the sun was just approaching the distant horizon, the sky illuminated with soft, pre-dawn light. Light enough to see anything that was not too far away. Light enough for a man lying nearby to see Harald stand and shout in a weak voice, “Harald Whale-rider!” and Harald to give a weak smile in return.

  It was perhaps the worst exchange that might take place in Thorgrim’s presence at that particular moment. He felt his anger flare red hot once again, and he grabbed Harald by the shoulder of his tunic and half dragged him down the beach, toward the water where they would be out of earshot. He could feel Harald stumbling as he tried to keep up but he did not look at the boy. He could hear Harald’s weak, mumbled protests and the confused sounds he made.

  They arrived near the water’s edge and Thorgrim let go of Harald and turned and faced him. In all that had happened, the arrival at the beach, the butchering of the whale, the feast that followed, the celebration of Harald Whale-rider’s feat, Thorgrim had had no chance to speak to the boy, to express his considerable displeasure. But now he intended to do just that.

  Harald in turn straightened and smoothed out his tunic and tried to look as if he had some understanding of what was going on, some sense of how to react. He opened his mouth to speak but Thorgrim did not give him the chance.

  “You’re a great hero now, it seems,” Thorgrim said.

  Harald stood for a moment, mouth open, clearly unsure how to react, what answer he should give. “It seems that way,” he said at last. “At least…the others seem to think it.”

  “Do you think you’re a hero?” Thorgrim asked.

  Harald’s brows went together. “I…I don’t know…” he stammered and then his confidence seemed to fill in like a sea breeze. “No one had ever heard of anyone doing such a thing as I did with the whale,” he said. “Maybe not heroic, but it was something.”

  “Something…” Thorgrim said, his voice trailing off. “Did I not tell you when we sailed to keep your place with the fleet?”

  “Well…yes…” Harald admitted. “But that was before we saw the whale.”

  “And before we saw Bergthor Skeggjason’s ships. Which we were not ready to meet, thanks to you and your foolishness.”

  “Bergthor’s no threat to us. He meant us no harm,” Harald protested and Thorgrim wanted to smack him, one of the few times in his life he had felt that way. He had actually done so on a few occasions, when Harald was younger. A good swat on the backside. It had been good for the boy. He wondered if it would do any good now.

  “We didn’t know that,” Thorgrim said, trying to remain calm. “We didn’t know it was Bergthor Skeggjason at all. It might have been someone wanting a fight, and here you were off playing with some fish, and not there to help if we needed you.”

  Harald stood a little straighter still. “Are you calling me a coward, father?” he asked.

  By the gods, does this boy understand nothing? Thorgrim thought.

  “No, I’m not saying you’re a coward. I’m saying you’re foolish. That you acted foolishly. By leaving the rest of us and going off to play your little game you made the whole fleet weaker. And you divided us, so we would have been in a bad place if it had come to a fight. You
couldn’t have helped us. We couldn’t have helped you.”

  Harald might have acted like a fool, but Thorgrim knew the boy was not stupid. He expected Harald to understand what he was saying, to feel chastened as he realized his mistake. But looking into Harald’s face he did not see a humbled, chastened young man. He saw defiance. And arrogance.

  “The others don’t agree,” Harald said. “The others don’t think it was foolish, they think it was a fine thing I did.”

  “The others are not responsible for all these ships and men. I am,” Thorgrim explained. “And don’t be so sure you’re a great hero. The men who pull the oars might think you’re some sea god, but the men who hold the tillers don’t. I don’t think you’ll find that Godi or Halldor or Asmund or any of the other ship masters think you did such a great thing.”

  “Then maybe they should eat dried fish, and not join in with us, feasting on the whale meat I provided,” Harald said. Thorgrim frowned, squinted at the boy, hardly believing he had just heard what he had heard. He wondered when and how the boy had come to be so arrogant.

  “I can see that you’re not understanding why…” Thorgrim began but Harald cut him off.

  “Or maybe it’s just you who aren’t happy about this,” he said. “Maybe you can’t stand anyone else being the hero. None but Thorgrim Night Wolf gets to show his cleverness or his courage.”

  Thorgrim shook his head. That was it. Harald had gone over the cliff with that accusation. “You’re done as master of Dragon,” he said. “Herjolf will have command. You’re done.”

  For an instant the arrogance was gone from Harald’s face and Thorgrim saw the little boy that Harald had once been. But it was only a flash, and then there was anger and defiance in its place.

  “I’m…you’re taking my ship from me? Because I killed a whale?”

  “Bergthor killed the whale, not you,” Thorgrim said. “And that’s not why I’m taking the ship, not because you acted like a fool. I’m taking it because you don’t seem to have learned from the stupid thing you did. And until you can admit mistakes and learn from them then you have no place as master of a ship. Or a leader of men.”

  Harald glared at him. “The others…” he began, then stopped.

  “‘The others’ what?” Thorgrim asked. He knew what Harald intended to say, and he wanted to see if the boy was so far gone in his arrogance that he would dare to say it. But Harald held his tongue, so Thorgrim said it for him.

  “The others won’t stand for you being treated this way? For me taking your ship? What will they do? Who among them will dare question me?”

  The sun lifted above the horizon and the early morning light fell on Thorgrim and Harald and it did not soften the look of fury on Harald’s face, not in the least. For a long moment he continued to glare at Thorgrim and Thorgrim held his glare and waited for Harald to speak. He could see the conflicting desires tugging and pulling at Harald’s mind: the desire to lash out at his father wrestling with the desire to not further anger the man who controlled so much of his fate. The conflict of being a man, his own man, while also and inextricably being the son of Thorgrim Night Wolf.

  Finally, without a word, Harald turned and marched off up the beach, his heavy footsteps silent in the sand, and Thorgrim let him go.

  That was the right thing, Thorgrim thought. It was the right thing, what I did. He had no real doubt about it. But it was not easy, and he knew there would be more trouble to come.

  He turned away from Harald’s retreating figure. He turned to the east, to stare off down the beach, into the distance, because staring off into the distance helped him think. But now he found himself staring at the carcass of a whale, fifty feet away. The tail end of its long, black body was still in the water, its square head resting on the beach. A swarm of gulls circled and screeched and pulled at the tendrils of meat. They seemed to be fighting over the remains despite the fact that there was more there than a thousand gulls could eat.

  Just aft of the head, great swaths of the whale’s flesh had been cut away, revealing a thick layer of greyish white blubber, and under that the pink and red meat. From the look of it, the men had taken quite a bit from the beast, and there was still quite a lot left. Thorgrim could detect only a faint odor from the massive fish, but he knew it would not be long before the stench would be unbearable.

  His mind moved on from the whale. He thought of Harald and the exchange they had just had. And that brought him around to those thoughts that were most central to him these days. He was closer now, closer to Agder, to his farm, than he had been in nearly three years, and he was moving even closer all the time.

  The gods had let him leave Ireland, at least. They had allowed him to make some progress along the south coast of Engla-land. How far he was from that stretch of water that separated Engla-land from Frankia and Frisia he did not know. Not too far, he imagined, not more than a few days’ sail with a fair wind behind him. He did not believe that the southern coast of Engla-land was any longer than the distance from, say, East Agder to Hedeby, a voyage he knew well.

  Agder. Vik. His farm. To return to that place and remain until death finally came for him. He had longed for his home since that first winter in Dubh-linn. But now the longing was more acute, far more. His conflict with Harald, his aching body, the turmoil in his mind, it seemed to him it would all be cured by returning to his home.

  He smiled to himself. Your home is a fantasy to you, he thought. In your mind it’s become like some magic place dreamed up by a child.

  Agder was not free of troubles, he knew that. And just yesterday Bergthor had reminded him of that fact.

  The gods had dropped Bergthor right in front of him to goad him with news of his home. Thorgrim had probed the man for any word he could get, any half-remembered news of Agder. And Bergthor had obliged him, telling him what he knew of the neighbors, the freemen and their success or failures, births, deaths, marriages.

  He told Thorgrim of how Halfdan had expanded his great hall and the walls of his compound, made them higher and greater in circumference. He told of Halfdan’s ever increasing greed for land and for expanding his kingdom, for putting more and more people who could pay taxes and tribute under his rule. Halfdan was ambitious, and growing more so, and Thorgrim and Bergthor both agreed that no good would come of that.

  And from where he stood, on some empty beach on Engla-land’s south coast, Thorgrim could only hope that Odd had the good sense to stay clear of those troubles. Odd was a smart one. Smarter than Harald, Thorgrim guessed. Smarter than himself, probably: the boy’s intelligence came down from his mother. But being smart did not always mean making the right choices. Sometimes a man was driven by something more primitive than his brain.

  He sighed a loud sigh because there was no one there to hear him. He headed back up the beach toward where the others lay spread out over the sand like wrack tossed there by a storm. The men were just starting to move, to roll out of whatever covers they had, or to push themselves up off the sand where they had fallen. The more ambitious among them were stoking up the fires to cook the morning whale.

  He reached the place where he and Failend had made their bed the night before. Failend was sitting cross legged on top of the bear skin that had served as a blanket. She was wearing leggings and a tunic and was running a comb through her long, dark hair.

  Thorgrim stopped a few feet away and let his eyes rest on her. He and his men had become so accustomed to her that she attracted no more notice than any of the others, but being in the company of Bergthor’s men had reminded Thorgrim of how unusual she was. To see a woman dressed in men’s clothes was odd enough; to see one carrying weapons was odder still.

  And for all her manly attire, Failend was a great beauty: petite and shapely, with fine features and a gorgeous fall of black hair. Thorgrim had seen the appreciative looks on the men’s faces as she walked by. He imagined there had been considerable discussion of her status and circumstance. He wondered if any of Bergthor’s men wou
ld be bold enough or eager enough to try and win her favors.

  She looked up at him and smiled and he smiled back. “Good morning,” he said.

  “Good morning,” Failend answered. Her speech, like everything else about her, was quite unique. She and Louis de Roumois had picked up the Norse tongue quickly, she quicker than Louis because she wanted to learn it, whereas Louis simply felt he had no choice. And just as Louis spoke the language with a Frankish accent, which was ugly to Thorgrim’s ear, Failend spoke with the accent of her native Ireland which, to Thorgrim, was not ugly at all. It might have been more the soft, melodic quality of Failend’s voice, rather than the accent, but he did not find her speech unpleasing in the least.

  “Did you sleep well?” Thorgrim asked. In the past, when they made love, which was often, they had both slept soundly, but that had not been the case for some time.

  “I did sleep well,” she said. “Whale meat agrees with me.”

  “We were at sea nearly the whole day yesterday,” Thorgrim said, “and I never saw you throw up once. You’re becoming quite the seafarer.”

  Failend smiled, her lovely, full-tooth smile. “Hardly,” she said. “If the seas had been an inch bigger I would have been face down over the side.” She seemed in a good humor that morning, and that made Thorgrim happy and eased the trouble in his mind a bit.

  She looked off to the west, still running the comb slowly through her hair, then looked up at Thorgrim again. “I saw Harald go by. For a great hero he didn’t seem too happy.”

  “He wasn’t very happy,” Thorgrim said. “I didn’t treat him like the hero he thinks he is.”