The Midgard Serpent

by James L. Nelson

  “Yes, lord.”

  “I’m sending you to make that happen. You understand?”

  “Yes, lord.”

  “How many men do you need?”

  “Three dozen, lord, if I may pick them myself,” Skorri said.

  “Very good,” Halfdan said. “Go. Come back with Odd. And his compatriots. Alive.” He considered adding that if Skorri could not do that then he had best not come back at all. But he did not say as much. He did not have to. Skorri knew it perfectly well.

  * * *

  It took Skorri Thorbrandsson precious little time to round up the three dozen men he meant to take with him on the hunt. They were the men who had come with him when he joined Halfdan’s household, the men who had ridden with him for much of his long, effective, bloody career as hirdsman to various jarls, as a soldier for hire, a killer for hire, and now sœslumadr for King Halfdan the Black, the greatest leader he had ever known.

  Most of Skorri’s men were already on the fugitives’ trail. He sent them out the very moment he discovered Odd and the guards missing. He sent men to rouse Onund Jonsson, though Skorri had been pretty certain they would not find Onund in his tent. Skorri saw Onund’s hand in this business from the first: Onund had divided loyalties and Skorri had never trusted him.

  Skorri’s horse was waiting just a few dozen yards from Halfdan’s tent, saddled and ready, the reins in the hand of Kolbein Thordarson, who was mounted as well. Skorri took the reins and swung himself up into the saddle.

  “What of the others?” Skorri asked.

  “Those you sent to the west and south, they came back. Found nothing. They’re waiting just beyond the camp. Those to the north, they have not returned.”

  Skorri nodded. The dead guards and the tracks though the tall grass were off to the east, and that was most likely the direction in which the fugitives had gone. But Odd was a clever one, Skorri knew that, and whoever had helped him had to be clever as well, so it was important that nothing be assumed.

  “Very good. I’m going to the east. Get the rest of our men and follow.”

  Kolbein nodded and jerked his reins, spinning his horse to the left as Skorri spun his own horse to the right. He put the spurs to its flanks and charged off, covering a stretch of ground he had already covered several times that morning, the few hundred yards of open field between the camp and the two dead guards.

  The track was a wide swath of trampled grass leading off to the east. Made by the two guards walking side by side, and most likely supporting Odd between them, because Odd certainly did not have the strength to walk on his own.

  Onund had been with them, Skorri was certain. There was no indication that the guards had been forced to go. They must have been ordered to take the prisoner and follow. And the only men in the camp with the authority to give such an order were himself, Halfdan and Onund.

  Skorri came to the place where the guards lay dead. Their bodies were just as they had been found, one man on his side, one on his back, deep rents in their necks, black with dried blood, eyes wide open, dark patches below their heads where the blood had soaked into the ground and coated the weeds and grass.

  Skorri came to a stop and slid down from his horse. There was no one else there — he had ordered the others to follow the trail, to hunt down Odd and whoever was helping him. He stepped closer to the dead men, looking close to see if there was anything he had missed. Their spears and seaxes were gone, no doubt taken by the men who had killed them. No reason to leave good weapons behind. The leather pouches on their belts had been clasped shut when Skorri first saw the bodies that morning, but now they were open. It must have been his own men, helping themselves to the spoils. Skorri smiled. That was fine. He hoped there would be even more plunder coming their way.

  He heard the sound of horses coming and looked up to see Kolbein Thordarson leading a dozen horsemen down the trail. Skorri mounted his own horse again, swung it around and led the way east, the rest of his men following behind. There was nothing more to be learned from the dead men.

  They continued on, following the path of trampled grass. Skorri would have been able to follow the trail even if it was not so easy to pick out. He was a good tracker. He was good at most everything he did. It was that inherent talent and native intellect and brutal and remorseless ambition that had taken him from third son of an impoverished farmer to the man he was now.

  He was fourteen years old when he took his father’s sad smattering of weapons and the family’s only horse and rode off to make himself into something his father and grandfather had never been. A man of power, position and respect. The weapons and horse were not a gift. He had just taken them. And even at fourteen he was a man his father dared not challenge.

  From there it had been a long, inexorable and bloody uphill climb to where he stood today.

  The field over which the fugitives had run sloped down for half a mile or so until it terminated at a gravel beach where the sea lapped gently back and forth. Here and there outcroppings of granite broke free from the ground, and stands of woods made little dark patches on the green countryside. Just offshore a smattering of small rocky islands were scattered like a broken wall between the land and the open ocean beyond.

  Skorri’s men were down by the water, some mounted, some standing by their horses. They had orders to track the fugitives only so far, and then to wait for him. As much as he relied on his men Skorri didn’t really trust anyone besides himself to do things right. Certainly not when it came to something as crucial as this. A great deal of Skorri’s future now rested on how well he carried out Halfdan’s orders.

  He reached the water’s edge where the others were waiting and climbed down from his horse, and Valgard Arason, Skorri’s second in command of the men, stepped over to him. Valgard had long hair and a long beard which received little attention from him, grooming-wise, and so was generally a tangled mess. But what Valgard lacked in aesthetics he made up for in loyalty and strength. He was smart as well, but not too smart, which was what Skorri wanted in a second.

  “We tracked them this far, Skorri,” he said, pointing to the ground. “I figured here we had best wait for you.”

  Skorri nodded. He looked down at the ground where Valgard was pointing. The path made by the men in flight ran down through the tall grass and onto the beach and then headed north along the shore, though the footprints were hard to see in the gravel. Skorri knelt down beside the trail, where the grass yielded to stone.

  “Any of our men walk here?” he asked, gesturing toward the track.

  “No. I made sure they kept clear. The tracks are just from those whore’s sons we’re after.”

  Skorri nodded. Good, he thought. He could learn something from a trail that was undisturbed.

  He let his eyes move slowly over the ground. He could see where something had been dragged and he guessed it was from Odd’s feet as they half carried him away, trying to move fast. Two men had helped him walk, and there were more beside that. Half a dozen people, maybe? That seemed about right.

  He looked next at the point where the trail ran onto the beach. The fugitives would have known they could be easily tracked through the field, so they went down to the water’s edge where their tracks would be much harder to see. Skorri could see the trail running off north, moving in and out of the water. They would have tried to step though the surf where their tracks would be completely obscured, but it was probably not so easy in the dark.

  “Looks like they headed north there,” Valgard offered. Skorri nodded, though he had no interest in the man’s opinion. But Valgard was right. Odd and his rescuers had headed north, following the edge of the sea. If they were on foot they could not have gone far. If they had horses waiting then they would be easy to track.

  Skorri stood, his eyes still on the ground. “We’ll follow along the shore, but send some men out…” He stopped, something catching his eye, some oddity, something out of place. He walked slowly toward the water’s edge and squatted down. There
was an indent in the shingle beach, like a heel print. Not heading north like the rest. It looked more as if it had been made by someone walking south.

  He moved his eyes slowly along the line where the sea met the shore. He could see more prints at various intervals stretching away. Barely visible, so faint they might not have been prints at all, might have been some naturally occurring depression in the beach. But Skorri did not think so.

  Once again he stood and slowly he began to follow the beach south, moving in the opposite direction from the more obvious tracks. He could hear Valgard and a few others following behind, but they would know better than to interrupt him as he scanned the shore.

  Fifty yards down the beach he found it. A sharp cut in the gravel, a deep groove that seemed to emerge from the water. Around it, the prints of feet that had dug deep into the beach. It was the place where the bow of a boat had been run up ashore, where men had struggled to shove it back into the sea.

  Oh, may the gods strike them down, Skorri thought, but furious as he was he was impressed as well. A clever trick. They had almost fooled him.

  He looked out over the water, but there was nothing to see save for islands and the distant sea.

  “Find a boat, now. Now!” he said to Valgard. This business had just become vastly more difficult.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  By land and water

  the king's fleet is safe,

  and the chief's men also.

  The Poetic Edda

  Thorgrim Night Wolf stood on the raised deck at Sea Hammer’s bow as the men came ashore, all the men who had just fought so desperately. Men limping, men with arms hanging uselessly or tied in slings, men supported by their fellow warriors or carried by their fellow warriors and eased over the sides to waiting hands ashore.

  Sea Hammer and some of the other ships were tied up to the docks that jutted out into the river, others were run up onto the mud banks. When the English fleet had withdrawn, breaking off the fight and making for the river down which they had come, it left Thorgrim with a choice — continue on to Hamtun or flee back down the bay to the safety of open water.

  That was the choice but really it was no choice at all. The English had already served out more humiliation than Thorgrim cared to eat in a lifetime. He would die, and he would lead his men to their deaths, before he would compound their shame by running off.

  The hard rain had turned to a mist, engulfing them like a wet smoke as they pulled north. The town of Hamtun, or what Thorgrim guessed was Hamtun, came into sight at last off the starboard bow. A cluster of thatched houses, boats pulled up on the shore. Nets set out to dry, which they would not do that day or for some time to come, Thorgrim guessed. A few docks reaching out into the water. They could see the roof of a church rising above the other buildings and set back from the water, but overall it was a sorry looking place.

  It was not Hamtun they had come for, of course, but the promise of Winchester, somewhere off to the north. Winchester, seat of the king of that country, with Christ churches filled with silver and the homes of rich men to plunder.

  Winchester better have more to it than this pig sty, Thorgrim thought as he watched the town of Hamtun materialize out of the fog. He shook his head slowly, disgusted with himself. One mistake after another. He had little experience with the English and he had underestimated them and that was the most foolish mistake of all.

  But he would not do it again. The docks and the village off the starboard bow were tempting, but the English army that had met them on the water might well be on shore by now. If Thorgrim landed his fleet in Hamtun there would be nothing stopping the English men-at-arms from launching another attack against his own bloodied army. And Thorgrim did not think they could survive another such assault.

  With a sharp order he instructed the helmsman to turn Sea Hammer to larboard and as the ship turned the rest of the fleet followed astern. They would land across the water, putting the head of the bay between the English warriors and his own men.

  There were no orders given, no council of the lead men, as one by one the ships came ashore. It was clear to everyone what had to happen next. The wounded had to be tended to. The dead had to be sent off to wherever they were bound. Vessels had to be repaired. Vengeance had to be meted out. They would not be leaving that place for some time.

  If Hamtun was nothing too impressive, then the village across the water was even less so. There was the same cluster of houses, only fewer, the same boats, the same nets. And there was a larger building, just as there was in Hamtun, which Thorgrim guessed was also a church, and he was pleased to see it. Not for any hope of plunder: if that church had ever held anything of value it would have been carried off by now, though Thorgrim doubted it had ever housed anything much worth taking. Nor he did not care about that. It was a big place, a dry place, and it would serve as shelter for the wounded men of the fleet.

  He turned and looked inboard again, down at Sea Hammer’s deck. He opened his mouth to shout an order and then stopped, catching his words. He was about to call for Harald, he realized, just as he was so accustomed to doing. But Harald was not there. He had been aboard Dragon. And now he might well be dead. Thorgrim recalled how Herjolf had boldly turned the little ship toward the fighting.

  He felt a twist in his stomach. He wanted to go and see for himself, or at least send someone to find out, but he refrained. He would not treat Harald differently from any of the other men, for all his aching desire to do so.

  “Vestar!” he called, the first trusted man who came to mind. But the name was just leaving his mouth when he recalled the ax splitting Vestar’s head and driving him to Sea Hammer’s deck. Those thoughts were stumbling around Thorgrim’s head when Hall called forward.

  “Vestar’s dead,” he said. “Can I help?”

  “Get some men and go see that building over there is clear,” Thorgrim called, pointing toward the church. “And the houses around it. We’ll start getting our wounded in there.”

  Hall nodded and called to a few men around him and together they headed for Sea Hammer’s side. The deck was wet with the rain and mist, which had mixed with the blood to form an odd reddish sheen on the boards. There were still a few dead men lying at strange angles around the ship. The living had looked to the wounded first, getting them over the side where they could be better tended. The dead would get their turn.

  Starri Deathless was sitting on the deck, his back against the mast, his face turned up to the gray sky. His bare chest and face were covered with striations of blood and water as the rain ran in lines down his skin. He looked to be in agony. Not physical agony, not suffering from any wound caused by an English weapon, but in moral agony at being still among the living. Once again, Thorgrim was certain, Starri had come through the fight with not a scratch to show for it.

  He heard a voice behind him. “Thorgrim?”

  It was Failend. He knew it as soon as she said his name. There was certainly no other person in the fleet with a voice like hers, high and slightly musical with her Irish accent. Thorgrim turned and looked down at her. She had a bright red line across her cheek where a blade had evidently left its mark, and a bandage wrapped around a thigh.

  “You’re hurt,” Thorgrim said.

  “It’s nothing,” Failend said. She nodded toward Thorgrim’s waist. “So are you.”

  Thorgrim glanced down at the rent in his tunic, the torn fabric dyed pink with the blood and the rain. It had hurt terribly once the fighting had stopped, but as he concentrated on the fleet’s next move and his own failures the pain had subsided. He felt it flare again as he remembered that the injury was there.

  “That’s not anything either,” he said.

  “Hmm,” Failend said, doubtfully. “But I came to tell you, I went by Dragon and Harald is alive. He’s wounded…we’re all wounded, I suppose…but not bad. Not as bad as you. He’s helping with the men there.”

  Thorgrim gave Failend a smile. He had not asked her to check on Harald. He would
not have asked her to do that. But she knew that he was worried about his son, whether he would admit it, or show it, or not.

  “Thank you,” he said. He reached out and squeezed her shoulder. At another time he might have hugged her. Or kissed her. But not then.

  “Let me see to your wound,” she said.

  “No,” Thorgrim said. “I have to see to the others first.”

  Failend nodded. She did not argue. She knew full well he would not allow himself to be tended to until the others were looked after.

  Hall and his men came back and reported the church, the neighboring houses, and indeed all of the town were deserted. Thorgrim issued orders that sent the men of the fleet in to take possession of the empty structures. The wounded came flowing off the ships and were carried to the church, and those who could still walk with help were supported by their shipmates as they hobbled along.

  The dead were laid out along the waterfront. Thirty-six men lost, and many of the wounded would join them over the next few days. And for that Thorgrim had won possession of a miserable village on the shore of some miserable bay.

  As those men who were still mostly whole saw to the dead and wounded Thorgrim called Gudrid and Hall to him one more time. “Get a couple of boat crews together and find some boats. Plenty all along the water’s edge here. Hall, you take your boat down to the river that the English fleet came out of. Get as close to their ships as you dare, see what they’re about. Gudrid, you take men across the bay to Hamtun and see what’s going on there. You’re not going to fight or to raid, just to see what the English are doing. Report back to me once you know something. Understood?”

  The two men nodded and turned away and Thorgrim knew they would do as instructed. They were good men, dependable men. He was glad they had not died under some English blade.

  Thorgrim did not remain aboard Sea Hammer. He stepped up onto the sheer strake and then across to the dock to which they were tied. It was well worn, slick with the rain, but heavily built and felt sturdy enough. He walked along toward the shore, calling to the captains of the other ships he passed, hearing reports of the number of men they had lost, the damage they had suffered. It was not good, any of it.