The Midgard Serpent

by James L. Nelson

  “Mon Dieu, no!” Felix shouted. He grabbed the shaft of the spear and jerked the point free, not even considering whether or not that was the best thing to do. He dropped to his knee at Æthelwulf’s side. Leofric was kneeling as well.

  “My lord! My lord! Do you hear me?” he shouted. Æthelwulf looked at him, his mouth still open. There seemed to be a moment of confusion, and then he nodded.

  “I hear you, Felix,” he said, his voice stronger than Felix had dared hope. Another man knelt down beside the king and Felix saw it was the captain of the guard.

  “Get your men around the king and get the ship clear of the heathens!” Felix shouted. “We must get clear so we can attend to the king!”

  The captain nodded and was on his feet again. Half a dozen of the guard took their place forming a loose circle around the king and the two men at his side. Felix saw men hefting the long oars and pushing the heathens’ ships away from their side.

  He looked aft. The boy with the horn was standing there, white and frightened-looking. “Blow retreat!” Felix shouted. “Blow retreat, blow it loud!”

  Felix, of course, was not the one to make such decisions; he had no such authority. But no one aboard that ship was likely to argue the point, and he hoped those on the other ships would take it to be the king’s command.

  The boy nodded. He put the horn to his lips. The first note was strangled and ugly, but the second came out pure and loud, very loud, loud enough, Felix was sure, to be heard on all the English ships in the fleet, even through the battle cry.

  Enough of this nonsense, Felix thought. We must attend to the king.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  [S]pear spilled

  rivers of blood,

  and it ran from

  wound red on sword.

  The Poetic Edda

  Starri Deathless’s war cry echoed around the fleet, followed right after by his announcement: Now they’re coming out! Ha, a proper greeting! He did not bother clarifying, but any of the men who had sailed and fought with Starri knew right off what he meant. Enthusiasm like that could only mean there was an enemy coming to fight.

  A buzzing ran fore and aft among the rowers, and those not on an oar leaned out over the side as Thorgrim had.

  “Keep rowing, you bastards! Keep your minds on your work!” Thorgrim shouted, though his own mind was racing off in many directions at once. He could not let the English catch up with the smaller ships and crush them. It would be a slaughter. By the looks of it the lead ship alone in the English fleet might have a hundred men aboard.

  Would Herjolf stand and fight, or would he get out of the way? If Harald was still in command then Thorgrim knew exactly what he would do: he would drive Dragon right into the enemy and fight as if he had no doubt he would win. But Herjolf? Thorgrim did not know him well enough to judge.

  And which would he prefer that Herjolf do? Thorgrim was not sure of that either. It would not be smart of the little Dragon to take on that big English ship, but sometimes the smart thing was not necessarily the best thing.

  Thorgrim saw Gudrid standing nearby and he called him over. “Take the tiller,” he said. “Keep on this course. We’ll be turning directly.”

  Gudrid nodded and took the tiller and Thorgrim stepped away. He had to turn the ship around, to go after the English fleet, but first he had to see what direction he should turn. He did not want his carefully organized fleet to turn into a chaotic mess, but he wasn’t sure that he could stop it.

  He grabbed hold of the tall carved sternpost, the wood slick with rain, put a foot on the sheer strake and heaved himself up, looking astern around the post like he was hiding behind a small tree. He was not pleased by what he saw.

  The lead ship of the English fleet, the big one, was nearly up with the smaller ships at the end of the line. Thorgrim thought he saw Dragon turning away, trying to get clear rather than tangle with the more powerful vessel, but he could not be sure. All the Northmen’s ships were turning at once, turning in different directions, looking to get into the fight, and Thorgrim had a hard time seeing through the ranks of hulls and masts and yards that stood between Sea Hammer and the enemy.

  “Gudrid, turn to starboard!” Thorgrim shouted. Bergthor’s ship Wave Splitter, two hundred feet away, was turning to larboard. Bergthor had sense enough to turn away from Sea Hammer, and not toward her, which would have put them in great danger of colliding.

  The words had hardly left Thorgrim’s mouth before Sea Hammer began to turn. Thorgrim dropped back down to the deck. No need to look astern: the other ships were abeam of them now and soon would be right ahead as Gudrid spun the ship around.

  “There, Gudrid, keep this heading!” Thorgrim called as Sea Hammer’s bow pointed like an arrow at the mass of frantically maneuvering ships. Wave Splitter was now off their starboard side and also pulling hard for the fight. It looked to Thorgrim as if he and Bergthor had the same thought: Sea Hammer would come in on the left side of the fleet, Wave Splitter on the right, and the English would be caught between the largest ships of the Northmen’s fleet.

  The mass of vessels ahead was like a fog, sometimes an impenetrable wall, sometimes opening up to give a surprising view. Such a gap appeared, just briefly, between Blood Hawk and one of Bergthor’s ships, and through it Thorgrim caught a glimpse of the big English ship which was leading their fleet. Dragon had indeed engaged her. She was lying alongside and Thorgrim guessed they had grappled, and that even now the men of Dragon were storming over the Englishman’s side.

  Or at least he hoped that was what was going on. He was glad to see that Herjolf had taken the bold course, the way Harald would have done. He pictured the two of them, side by side, leading the men on the attack.

  Then the gap closed again, with Oak Heart and another ship blocking Thorgrim’s view as they turned toward the attackers. Thorgrim clenched his teeth with impatience and irritation. He had positioned the fleet so that Sea Hammer would be first into any fight. But now she was at the end of the line, and the smaller ships were already engaged.

  Starri came sliding down from aloft. He hit the deck and pulled his tunic up over his head and threw it aside. His movements had a jerky, spastic quality and Thorgrim knew the fighting madness was coming on him. There was no talking to him now, and there would not be until the battle was done, assuming Starri once again suffered the disappointment of staying alive.

  “Straight on,” he said to Gudrid, then yelled forward, “You men who aren’t rowing, get ready to board one of these bastards! Over the bow!” Men had been slipping on mail, putting on helmets, strapping extra weapons to their waists, whatever they could do in the short amount of time they had to prepare for the fight.

  Thorgrim considered trying to get his own mail on and knew there was not enough time. His shield was near, and the helmet he sometimes wore, and those would have to do.

  Up ahead the fog of ships broke up again, and Thorgrim saw a straight line between him and one of the Englishmen charging ahead. It and the rest of the English fleet had left the lead ship behind and were coming at the Northmen from either side, doing to the Northmen just what Thorgrim and Bergthor had hoped to do to them.

  “There,” Thorgrim said, pointing at the largest of the oncoming ships. “We’ll go alongside those whore’s sons, come right alongside and board them.” He could feel the anger growing, the rage. The red madness, he used to call it. A fighting rage like Starri felt, if only a fraction as intense. Thorgrim, at least, was still able to think even when the fight was on him.

  He opened his mouth to call for the rowers to be ready to pull in the oars when he saw Bergthor’s ship turning fast, turning toward Sea Hammer, threatening to run into her starboard side if Sea Hammer did not turn as well.

  “Bergthor!” Thorgrim shouted, more in frustration than in hope of being heard.

  “Turn to larboard?” Gudrid asked with considerable concern in his voice.

  “Hold,” Thorgrim said, eyes on Bergthor’s ship. Sea Hammer stil
l had a straight and unimpeded course toward the big English ship, he did not want to throw it away, and there was still a chance he could shoot past Wave Splitter’s bow.

  And then from behind Wave Splitter came another of Bergthor’s other ships, not the biggest of them, but big enough, pulling hard for the same Englishman that Thorgrim was making for. They had driven past Wave Splitter, forcing Bergthor to turn out of the way, and were on a course to hit Sea Hammer next. Whoever was driving that ship seemed not to care who was in their way.

  Thorgrim could see that Sea Hammer and this other would collide if he did not turn immediately. In truth it might already be too late. They were both driving toward a spot on the water where they would meet, bow to bow, with less than a hundred feet to go.

  “Larboard, now!” Thorgrim called. Gudrid grunted as he pushed the tiller over. Sea Hammer began to turn, and as it did Thorgrim saw that it would do no good. Even if this other fool realized he was going to hit Thorgrim’s ship it was too late to prevent it.

  “Bastard!” Thorgrim shouted and spat out a mouthful of rainwater. “Get the oars in, now!” He could not avoid the impact but he could prevent his oars from being snapped like twigs.

  The rowers pulled the oars in quickly, shouting and cursing the ship that was charging at them, not fifty feet away. In that final moment the master of the other ship must have realized the danger. Thorgrim saw his oars churning hard, pulling astern, trying to slow the momentum, a useless gesture. The ship slammed into Sea Hammer just forward of the starboard beam, its stem crushing the sheer strake as the men aboard Sea Hammer flung themselves out of the way.

  Sea Hammer rolled hard to larboard with the sound of snapping and crushing wood and furious men. Then it rolled back again, doing more damage still to the starboard planks, but the two ships remained locked together, the bow of the smaller ship jammed into Sea Hammer’s side.

  “You stupid whore’s son!” Thorgrim shouted. In the tangle of men on the other ship’s deck he could not see which of them was the master, but Thorgrim’s every impulse screamed for him to leap aboard the ship, find the man and beat him to death.

  It was only with some difficulty that he kept himself from doing so. The red madness had been creeping up on him before and this absurd collision only fanned that flame. It was bad enough that he was going to be the last into the fight: now he might not get into the fight at all, might have to watch, helpless and impotent, thanks to the stupidity of one of the captains of his own fleet.

  You better have the good sense to die in the fighting, Thorgrim thought of the man, but that was all the time he could devote to him. He jumped off the afterdeck and ran forward. The bow of the other ship was looming up over Sea Hammer’s side like some monster come from the deep. A crowd of Sea Hammer’s men were clustered around, shouting and pushing against the smaller ship’s stem, while men from the other ship leaned over the sides at the bow, adding their own pointless shouting to the chaos.

  Thorgrim’s men cleared a path as they saw him coming. He stopped where the other ship was wedged into Sea Hammer’s rail. He could see the shattered wood of the sheer strake and the two below it: still high enough above the waterline that they would not sink, unless the seas grew big.

  “Any leaking?” he asked. A couple of the men had had the sense to pull up the loose deck boards and check.

  “Not that we can see,” Hall said. Thorgrim looked down into the dark space between the deck and the bottom of the ship. He could see water sloshing around, but there was always water there, just as there was aboard any ship. The important thing was that he could see no water coming in.

  “All right, let’s push these idiots free,” Thorgrim said. Sometimes in a collision such as this the one ship was the only thing keeping the other afloat, but Thorgrim was pretty certain that both ships could still float on their own. At least he was pretty sure Sea Hammer could. He didn’t much care about the other.

  Like a distant cloud of noise he could hear shouting and screaming and the clash of weapons, the sea fight happening all around him while he dealt with a wound inflicted by one of his own. Hands reached up from Sea Hammer’s deck and pressed against the rain-slick stem and sides of the other ship, but there was not much space against which to push.

  “Heave!” Thorgrim shouted, and every man who could lay a hand on the other ship pushed and strained, grunting, faces turning red with the effort. The bow of the ship moved an inch or so with a creaking protest, and then the men of Sea Hammer, as if on cue, stopped pushing and gasped for breath.

  “Again!” Thorgrim shouted, and the hands went back against the ship’s stem and sides. “Heave!”

  Once again the men leaned into it, pushing and straining, guttural sounds coming from their throats, until it seemed as if their heads might burst. The bow moved another inch and stopped and the men stopped as well.

  What by the gods is hanging this up? Thorgrim wondered. They had to get some oars down there, use them as levers to try to pry the other ship away. He was about to call for them when the deck under his feet seemed to shudder as if it was coming apart. He staggered and reached out for a handhold to steady himself but there was nothing to grab. He felt himself going down and saw other men falling as well, saw images of feet coming off the deck and arms flailing.

  He hit the deck on his shoulder and felt the impact through his whole body. He grunted with the pain but pressed his palms against the boards and pushed himself up, still not certain what had happened. He heard shouting forward and turned to look in that direction.

  There was a ship there, its forward end pressed alongside Sea Hammer’s starboard bow. A big ship, but it was lacking the elegant sweep of one of the Northmen’s ships, and the high, proud stem topped with some frightening figurehead. There were men aboard the ship but they were climbing over Sea Hammer’s rails, shields and weapons in hand.

  What is this? Thorgrim thought, and then the confusion brought on by hitting the deck hard cleared away and he understood. While they were all dealing with the aftermath of the accident, every eye aboard Sea Hammer directed at the ship lodged in her starboard side, one of the English ships had come surging through the fleet and slammed into them, unseen. And now the English warriors, many English warriors, were flooding over the side.

  “On your feet! On your feet! We’re boarded!” Thorgrim shouted as he pushed himself up. He had left his helmet and shield back on the afterdeck and there was no getting them now.

  Thorgrim’s men were still standing and retrieving weapons when the first of them fell to an English ax: Vestar, a young man who had been in Thorgrim’s company for some time. More than a year, certainly. He charged right at the first of the English warriors, spear in hand. He thrust and the Englishman knocked the point aside with his shield and just as Vestar was raising his own shield the warrior raised his ax and brought it down on Vestar’s head, a powerful stroke that split Vestar’s skull and drove him straight down to the deck.

  Thorgrim felt his stomach twist at the sight. Not at the hideous wound — he was well accustomed to that sort of thing — but for the terrible waste of a good man. A man he liked and trusted. A man who died because he, Thorgrim, did not have sense enough to keep his eyes on the sea around them.

  The shouting and the clash of weapons grew louder as the English came aboard in waves and the Northmen, caught unaware, tried to grab up their weapons and hold the English back at the same time. Thorgrim could see the situation falling apart right before his eyes, getting worse by the second, when a sharp scream tore through all the other noise of the nascent fight and Starri Deathless came running down the side of the ship, leaping like a goat from one sea chest to the next, half naked, a long battle ax in each hand.

  He came first to the man who had killed Vestar, who looked up at Starri with a mixture of surprise and horror on his face. He swung his ax but Starri shifted a few inches in his trajectory and the blade sailed past his legs. The Englishman raised his shield just as Starri jumped off the sea che
st and came at the man airborne. He was still in midair when he swung the axes down. They went right through the man’s shield, which seemed burst into a thousand slivers of wood, and did not stop on their way to his head and neck.

  Good. Bastard, Thorgrim thought as he saw Vestar’s killer fall.

  Starri and his victim fell together, Starri landing on top of the man who was doubtless dead before he was down. The Englishmen on either side had frozen in surprise but they recovered as Starri and their fellow soldier dropped in front of them. Axes and spears came up and thrust and hacked down but Starri rolled out of the way as they did, and the weapons hit the dead man with a sickening sound.

  Starri was back on his feet before the Englishmen could pull their weapons free. Thorgrim could see on their faces the expressions he usually saw on men confronted by Starri Deathless — surprise, fear, and in this case the horror of having accidently mutilated their dead comrade.

  And, as usual, the expressions did not last long. Starri was on them with the axes going like threshing flails: snapping spears, shattering swords, lacerating flesh.

  “Go! Go!” Thorgrim shouted to the men around him. Starri had bought them a few heartbeats’ time, enough for them to get to their feet and get their weapons ready for the fight.

  Thunder rolled overhead and a gust of wind blew across the deck and chilled Thorgrim in his soaked tunic. The rain, which had been just a drizzle, more like a heavy mist, built again into a genuine downpour as Thorgrim charged across the deck and into the line of fighting men.

  Starri had hacked his way into the center of the packed Englishmen against the starboard side and was fighting in his manic and undisciplined way. The English, it seemed, did not know who to fight: the Northmen charging across the deck or the madman in their midst; and that confusion gave Thorgrim’s men the one small advantage they had yet to enjoy.

  Iron-tooth was in Thorgrim’s hand as he reached the tideline of men. A battle ax came down at him and he raised the sword and caught the wooden handle of the ax with the blade, pushing it aside and sliding his sword down the shaft to slash the axman’s hand. Thorgrim felt the blade hit fingers. He drew it back and saw the ax fall as the man shouted in pain and stumbled back. Thorgrim thrust but missed. He saw the point of a spear coming for his left side, and he swung the blade down to his left and knocked it aside.