The smaller ships, Fox, Dragon and Black Wing, along with some of Bergthor’s vessels, were run up on the shore. Thorgrim paused at each, speaking with the master or some of the men of the crew, hearing what they had to say of the fight, encouraging them as he could, though he was not in the mood to summon up much in the way of optimistic speech.
He stopped near the bow of one of Bergthor’s ships, a bow he knew well from having seen it rammed into Sea Hammer’s side. He could see the damage to the ship’s stem where it had collided with his own ship, thanks to the master’s blind stupidity. He looked up at a cluster of men near the bow.
“Who’s the master of this ship?” he asked.
“Kotkel Skidason,” one of the men replied. “Or he was. Dead now. The bastard English took his head clean off.”
Thorgrim nodded. Good, he thought. Saved me the trouble. He left them and continued on.
He came to Dragon, which was the next to last ship on shore. He could not see Herjolf and imagined he was dead or wounded or off seeing to his wounded men in the church. Harald was amidships, helping set up a lanyard on the forward shroud that had somehow been cut through in the fighting.
“Harald!” Thorgrim called. He saw the boy look up, saw the cloud of resentment pass over his face as he saw who had called his name.
“Hello, father,” Harald managed and then went back to his work, which made Thorgrim angry in turn.
“Harald, get down here,” he called and Harald, with a grand look of exasperation, left off what he was doing, jumped over the low side into knee deep water and waded ashore.
“Yes?” he said, stopping a few feet from Thorgrim, arms folded across his chest. The anger had not dissipated, it seemed. Thorgrim had hoped maybe the violence of the battle would have washed it away, but it had not. If they had been fighting side by side, like before, than maybe it would have done, but as it was Harald’s attitude seemed not to have changed.
Thorgrim looked him up and down. There was a tear in his tunic at the shoulder and twin rips in his leggings across both shins, the obvious result of a sword passing by. The cloth was shredded and dull red, soaked with blood and rain.
“You’re wounded,” Thorgrim said. “You should have those bound up.”
Harald shrugged.
“Where’s Herjolf?”
Harald shook his head. “Off seeing to our wounded, maybe?” Thorgrim did not reply, just fixed Harald with his gaze. Harald met his eyes, held them for a moment, then looked away.
“You fought well, you men aboard Dragon,” Thorgrim continued. “I saw the ship turning out of the line. I thought you were getting clear of that big English bastard. I wouldn’t have faulted you if you did. But Herjolf was bold, took the ship right into the fight. I was pleased to see it.”
Harald nodded, but with no enthusiasm. “Yes,” he said. “Herjolf is a bold one.”
Thorgrim searched his son’s face for some expression or meaning behind his bland words but saw none. Various replies sifted through his head, shadows of things he wanted to say, but none of them formed into anything as solid as words.
“Good,” he said finally. “Good. See to your men.”
He turned and walked off with an uneasy feeling, an incomplete feeling. He wanted to think about what had just happened. This was new ground for him. Certainly Harald had been angry with him in the past. Harald was his son and Thorgrim had punished him many times over the years for any number of transgressions. But he was a man now, a man coming into his own. He seemed to feel this punishment more deeply than he ever had, and was holding on to it in a way he never had.
Well, then, he should not have been such an idiot in the first place, Thorgrim thought, and he got no further into his analysis when the next interruption came.
“Thorgrim!” Bergthor came pushing up, a bandage wrapped around his head and covering his left ear, where it was marked by a wide flower of blood.
“Bergthor,” Thorgrim said. “Is your wound bad?”
“Whore’s son English took my ear right off, son of a bitch,” Bergthor said, though in truth he did not seem so terribly upset. “Well, no matter, there’s nothing around here worth listening to anyway. Are you hurt bad? Lose many men?”
“I’m not hurt bad,” Thorgrim said. “I don’t know how many men I lost. More than I cared to lose.”
Bergthor made a grunting noise. “Yes, we all did that,” he said. Thorgrim could sense the man was about to ask what they should do next, or what Thorgrim had in mind, but Thorgrim was even less in the mood for discussion than usual, so he spoke before Bergthor could.
“We’ll get the wounded into the church over there where we can tend to them. We might as well have men go through the houses here, see if there’s any food or drink or anything worth taking. I doubt there will be. And we’ll see to the dead. Too many to bury. We’ll get them into one of these houses and send them off with fire.”
Bergthor was nodding at this, and it seemed he would have sense enough not to speak.
“I sent some of my trusted men off to see what the English are doing,” Thorgrim said. “I would just as soon they stay put. We’re not in much shape for more fighting today.”
Bergthor nodded again.
“Send men to find some cattle we can use for the funeral ceremony,” Thorgrim continued. Then, as he spoke, another idea came to him. “And find horses,” he added. “A dozen or so. With saddles and bridles, if that’s possible.”
Bergthor nodded again and said, “I’ll see to it, Thorgrim,” which was all Thorgrim wanted him to say.
“Good. Thank you,” Thorgrim said. “And…your men fought well. Thank you for that.”
Bergthor smiled, just a bit, and hurried off. Thorgrim continued his inspection of the men, the fleet and the town. The wounded in the church were being well cared for. Straw had been located and mounds of it set up as beds, various robes and such found in trunks had been torn into bandages. Food and ale were being served out. There was nothing there that required Thorgrim’s attention, so he left and returned to Sea Hammer, where repairs to the sheer strakes and other damage was well underway.
He was watching Ulf and a man named Raud, one of the better shipwrights in Sea Hammer’s crew, fitting a new section of planking when Failend found him. She had a small leather bag in her hand, a bag he recognized.
“Time to sew you up,” she said.
Unconsciously he reached down and touched the rent in his tunic and the throbbing wound underneath. He felt the warm, wet blood on his hand. It had stopped bleeding earlier, but his recent activity must have opened it up again. He sighed. There would be no putting Failend off.
He carefully tugged his tunic over his head and tossed it aside, then leaned against the side of the ship. Failend knelt in front of him. She drew a needle and thread from her bag and started in stitching him up, pinching the wound closed and running her needle through the flesh on either side. Thorgrim gritted his teeth against the pain: it was like being stabbed repeatedly by a tiny dagger.
Thorgrim had been stitched up many times before, by many different people, but almost always by fellow warriors, men more accustomed to killing than healing, men with big and clumsy hands. Failend, a woman of breeding, had been trained to needlework, and her stitches were small and even and elegantly done. Painfully, but elegantly done.
When she finished she washed the wound and wrapped a bandage around Thorgrim’s midriff. She found another tunic in Thorgrim’s sea chest and helped him put it on, then took the first to wash and mend with the same fine stitching she used to mend Thorgrim himself.
As the sun set, those who could gathered around the cottage in which the dead had been laid out. Bergthor’s men had rounded up three cows which were slaughtered. Thorgrim used Iron-tooth to slay one of the animals. He raised the sharp blade high and as he did so he felt all the anger and frustration and fury at himself come boiling over, like leaning over the glowing coal of a forge.
He swung the blade down and it cut thro
ugh the animal’s neck and the cow dropped as if the sword had pushed it to the ground. Blood ran free from the great rent in its neck and Starri Deathless stepped up and thrust a bowl under to catch as much of the warm liquid as he could.
Starri held the bowl and followed behind Thorgrim as he walked around the house, dipping the leaves of a severed tree branch in the blood and sprinkling it on the walls and thatch. He called to the gods to look kindly on the brave lives and honorable deaths of the men inside.
This was the funeral ritual that Thorgrim had made his own, over many years of performing such rites. He knew others did not send their dead off the way he did, but he guessed his way was as pleasing to the gods as any. The living stood watching, quiet and solemn. The dead did not complain.
When that was done the house was set on fire, lit from the inside. The rain and mist had stopped but the world was thoroughly wet and Thorgrim did not fear that the fire would spread to the other houses.
Soon the flames filled the doorway and the few windows of the house, and soon after that the tendrils of fire began clawing their way through the thatch on the roof, which was bone dry on the inside. Moments later the house was completely engulfed in flame, and the men inside were off to wherever the Valkyries deemed they should go.
Thorgrim was standing a ways back, watching as the roof collapsed, sending up a great shower of flame and embers when Bergthor stepped up, Hall and Gudrid beside him.
“Thorgrim? See who’s returned,” Bergthor said and it took Thorgrim a moment to remember that he had sent them off in the first place.
“What did you find?” Thorgrim asked.
“Not much,” Hall said. “I didn’t just approach the English ships, I climbed aboard one of them. They’re deserted. Tied to the river bank and deserted. Not a man aboard them, or anywhere near, that I could see.”
“Gudrid?” Thorgrim asked.
“The village was deserted, too,” Gudrid said. “We saw no one from the water so we landed and moved farther and farther from the river, and not a living thing did we find. We went about a mile beyond the village. There were signs the army had been there, and not so long before, but we saw nothing of them.”
Thorgrim nodded slowly as he considered this. Certainly the English could claim a victory in the fight on the bay, even if they had been the ones to leave the field. Did they think their work was done, that they would withdraw the army back to Winchester, or wherever it had come from? Would they not follow up on the beating they had given Thorgrim and his men?
“I can call together all the ships’ masters,” Bergthor suggested. “Call a war council, make some plan of what we’ll do next.”
“No,” Thorgrim said. “No council. I know what I’m doing next.” He was done with talking. Now he would act, and he would act as he saw fit.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
It was a whirlwind,
when together came
the fallow blades
where men together fought:
ardent for battle,
disdaining flight;
the chieftain
had a valiant heart.
The Poetic Edda
Skorri Thorbrandsson was pleased with the boat that Valgard found. A fishing boat, about twenty-five feet long and heavily built. It had six oars and a short mast to carry a square sail, much like a longship in miniature. Skorri would be able to cram fifteen of his warriors aboard if he was not concerned about their comfort, which he was not.
He was less pleased with the amount of time it took Valgard to find the vessel. Half the morning had been eaten up waiting while he and a handful of men searched the coastline for some suitable craft. Skorri was not a patient man in the best of times, and this was hardly the best of times.
But he was not an unreasonable man, either. He knew even as he was giving Valgard the order to find a boat that it would not be done quickly. There were only so many boats, and most would be out fishing at that time of the day, despite the growing threat of weather. Or because of the growing threat of the weather. The fishermen would want to haul their nets one more time before Thor and Njord conspired to keep them land-bound.
This forced idleness gave Skorri time to think: to think about where Odd and his rescuers might have gone to elude pursuit and what he might do to run them to ground. To think about how far his service to Halfdan might take him, the wealth and power he might accrue in the service of the king.
And conversely, what might become of him if he failed to bring Odd back. Skorri did not care to admit it, but the example that Halfdan had made of Odd left a deep impression on him, as it had on all the men who had seen it, those who were in Halfdan’s service and those who were not.
“Alf!” Skorri called to one of his men sitting nearby. All the men under his command were hand-picked, good, reliable men, but of them Alf was the most dull-witted and perhaps the most expendable. He had been chosen for his strength, which was considerable, and not for his cleverness, which was less so.
“Lord?” Alf leaped to his feet.
“Ride back to Halfdan. Tell him we have not yet found Odd or Onund. Tell him we’re on the trail but we might be gone the night. He should look for our return tomorrow. I doubt before that.”
“Yes, lord,” Alf said, and it was clear by his tone and expression that he did not relish this task.
“Wait…” Skorri said as Alf turned to go. Alf looked back hopefully. “Tell Halfdan our return might be the day after tomorrow.”
“Yes, lord,” Alf said with even less enthusiasm. He looked afraid. Not terribly afraid, but more afraid than Skorri had ever seen him look. He hesitated for a moment and it seemed as if he might speak again. But he didn’t, and instead jogged off to fetch his horse.
I can’t go to Halfdan myself, Skorri thought. Valgard might return any time with the boat. I can’t be away. And it was true. Every word. But it was also not the chief reason he did not want to bring this bad news to Halfdan in person.
Coward… Skorri chided himself.
Alf, however, had not yet returned by the time Valgard and the others arrived with the boat, and Skorri took that to mean he had made the right decision. It would have only delayed them further had he gone to see Halfdan in person.
Maybe Alf never went to Halfdan at all, Skorri thought as he watched the boat coming in toward the beach, its square sail set and drawing, four men on the thwarts, Valgard aft at the tiller. Maybe he ran off, too afraid to talk to Halfdan. If that was so, then Halfdan would think Skorri had never sent word, and he would not be pleased about that.
Stop it, you whore’s son coward… Skorri thought. He was not, and never had been, a man given to fretting and second guessing. Except when it came to serving Halfdan the Black.
The halyard was let go and the sail came down in a jumble and the boat covered the fifty feet to the beach with the last of the way it carried. The bow ground up onto the shingle and Skorri’s men grabbed hold and pulled it farther up.
“I’m sorry, Skorri, we were gone so long,” Valgard said. “We saw boats on the water, but to find one on shore we….”
Skorri held up his hand and Valgard stopped. “I know you moved quick as you could,” he said. “Now we have to go.”
He turned back toward the other men. In the time Valgard was gone, Skorri had done more than just worry. He had made the men empty their bags of any food they had and bundle it all up to take in the boat. He had decided who of the men would go with them and who would stay and keep searching the shore.
“You men I named off for the boat, get aboard,” Skorri said, and those designated began to climb over the side of the boat and find places on the thwarts and up in the bow. Skorri turned to Valgard. “You know what to do?”
“Yes, lord,” Valgard said.
Skorri was all but certain Odd’s rescuers intended to take to the sea and get as far away as they could, as fast as they could. But they had already proven themselves to be clever, and it was quite possible they would double back
and come ashore. Under Valgard’s command the handful of men Skorri had left would split up and patrol the coastline, north and south, riding back and forth over the miles until they found Odd and the others, or they were recalled, or they died of old age.
Spears and shields and the bundle of food and a small cask of ale were handed to the men aboard the boat, and then the rest clambered in over the side and squeezed in where they could. Skorri climbed aboard last and threaded his way to the stern, taking his seat beside the tiller. He nodded to the men on shore and they grabbed onto the sheer strake and shoved the boat back into the water, splashing out waist deep to get the heavy-laden craft well clear of the bottom.
Awkwardly the men on the thwarts lifted the oars and set them in the tholes and began to row. Their efforts were much hampered by the number of men on board, but at least they would not have to row long. There was a breeze blowing, and once they were clear of the shore, once Skorri had decided the course they would take, they could pull the oars in again and set the sail.
Skorri pushed the tiller over and swung the boat off to the east, heading directly away from the beach. He looked over his shoulder. The men on shore were already mounted and riding off, half to the north, half to the south. He nodded to himself. Good men, he thought. All those he commanded, they were all good men because he had picked them and trained them himself. Together they would find Odd and bring him back.
And one day those men would be his hirdsmen, his private warriors and guard, when he was something much greater than King Halfdan’s sœslumadr.
He moved his eyes up from the beach, toward the jagged line where the sky met the land. The hint of pending storm had not gone away: indeed, the clouds had grown darker, the sky more looming and ugly.
The Midgard Serpent Page 29
