The Midgard Serpent

by James L. Nelson

  He turned his eyes back out to sea. The coast here looked just as it did in much of Norway, an irregular shoreline of rocky, pine-covered peninsulas jutting out into the sea, small humps of granite islands scattered at random, some so close you could throw a rock to them, some a mile or more off shore. It was a jagged, broken coast with hundreds of places for a small boat and its crew to hide. The chances of catching up with Odd and those who had helped him were frighteningly small, but the thought that he might fail did not even cross Skorri’s mind.

  “Get the sail on her,” Skorri called and he could sense the relief as the men pulled the oars in and others cast off the lashing that had been put around the sail and yard. A moment later the sail was hoisted up, snapping and flogging in the breeze. Then the sheet was pulled aft and the sail filled. The boat heeled to leeward and the note of the water running down her side rose in volume as the men on the thwarts leaned toward the weather side.

  Skorri felt the tug on the tiller as the boat tried to round up into the wind. He pulled it toward him a bit and settled on a course for open water. He had already put considerable thought into what direction he might go. Now, very soon, he would have to commit.

  He scanned the horizon, south to north. There were a half dozen or so boats out on the water, fishing boats much like the one they had commandeered. He let his eyes settle on each in turn. None of them appeared to be making any attempt to flee. None of them was really moving much at all. They seemed practically fixed where they were and Skorri imagined they were hauling nets. A few were moving slowly under sail or oars, searching out the schools of herring. Not the actions of men trying to put miles between themselves and possible capture.

  Somewhere off to the south lay Grømstad, the seat of Halfdan’s kingdom. To the north lay Fevik, Odd’s homeland, a place where he would be more likely to find shelter and help. But the wind was out of the north and west, which meant sailing north along the coast would not be easy.

  Odd was in bad shape. They would not want to subject him to the beating he would take on a small boat banging along to weather, spray coming over the rail. On the other hand, they would not much care to head to Grømstad and the den of the wolf.

  They’ll want to tend to him, Skorri thought. Odd was near death. There were not many men who could have survived as long as he had, and Skorri had come to grudgingly respect the strength of the man. But Odd was the son of Thorgrim Night Wolf, grandson of Ornolf the Restless and Ulf of the Battle Song. He came from good stock.

  Still, strong as he might be, there were limits to even his endurance. The rigors of the escape might have been enough to kill him. It seemed most likely that his rescuers would want to find a safe place to come ashore and tend to his wounds. Get him fixed up before they continued the flight.

  Skorri scanned the horizon again, ignoring the boats, looking instead at the islands. If Odd and the others were in a boat and wanted to briefly go ashore, then they would go to an island. They would not return to the land where they might be found by Halfdan’s patrols. If they did that, they would piss away all the advantage they had gained by taking to the sea.

  From his vantage point, his eye level just a few feet above the water, it was difficult for Skorri to tell how many islands there were. He did not know those waters, and it was not clear what was one island and what was two, overlapping, or if there were other islands hidden behind the ones he could see.

  Then something caught his eye, a smudge, a discoloration against the gray sky. He frowned and squinted and leaned forward. The wind was steady and brisk and that made it hard to tell if he was seeing what he thought he was. But yes, he was seeing it. He was all but certain. A thin column of smoke lifting up off an island somewhere ahead, a mile and half away.

  “You men,” he said, “any of you see smoke from any of the islands?”

  The men all turned one way or another, scanning the horizon, looking from one outcropping of land to another. It took a moment, but finally a man named Kolbein Thordarson, who was probably the most experienced sailor aboard the boat, spoke up.

  “There, lord,” he said, pointing in the same direction that Skorri had been looking.

  “Yes, I see it,” said another. “Wind’s blowing it away fast as it rises, but yes, I think I see it, too.”

  “Good,” Skorri said. He pushed the tiller away, turning the bow toward the base of the smoke column. “Ease that larboard sheet some, and take up on the starboard.”

  The sail was bellied out and straining, filled with the stiffening breeze. The boat was pitching a bit, its bow hitting the seas and tossing spray back. They were moving fast, as fast as they were likely to go with a boat as heavy laden as it was. The vessel could bear the weight, Skorri knew. It was built to stay afloat with the bottom loaded feet deep with fish. Hundreds of years of the experience of boat builders trying one thing then another had gone into her lines, her scantlings. She would not sink, even with fifteen men aboard. But neither would she sail terribly fast.

  Skorri looked through the crowd of men forward toward the island beyond their bow, a hump of granite a quarter mile long with a cap of pine trees. The smoke was coming from the far side, or so it seemed. In truth Skorri did not know if it was coming from that island or one behind it. And he would not know until he had rounded the island’s west end and seen what was there.

  “You think that’s them, lord?” Kolbein Thordarson asked, and the question surprised Skorri. It took a great deal of courage and an unbearable curiosity for Kolbein to have spoken up that way.

  “Yes,” Skorri said in a tone that did not invite further questions. But he had spoken the truth: he did think it was them.

  If Odd and the rest had tried to escape by boat — and Skorri was all but certain they had — then they would not have dared go far while it was still dark. Too many things to wreck on in those waters. They would have waited until first light, but it was not long after that when Odd was discovered missing and Skorri and his men tracked them down to the water. There had been no boat close to shore, no boat in sight save for the few fishing vessels off in the distance. Which meant the fugitives had stopped somewhere.

  It had to be the island. They would have wanted to tend to Odd’s wounds, get some hot food in him. Get him warm. It had to be the island.

  Skorri pulled the tiller a little more toward him. His eyes were on the island’s granite shore, his body was motionless save for the small movements of his arm shifting the tiller side to side. But his mind was hard at it as he envisioned the various ways this might play out, the most effective approach he might take.

  Land on this side of the island? Attack them overland?

  It had its merits. The fugitives would have no warning, unless they had a lookout in the trees watching them at that very moment.

  There might be more than one island, Skorri thought next. It seemed that the smoke was coming from the island just ahead, but he knew that could be deceptive. The fire might be burning on some bit of land behind this one, and he would look foolish indeed if he came ashore on the wrong island.

  No, there was no choice. Sail around the west end of the island and come ashore as close to the fire as possible. The men who had masterminded Odd’s rescue might have thought an island was a good place to hide, but it had a downside as well. On an island there was only so far you could run.

  The boat pounded along, driven by the taut sail. The water beyond the island came into view and Skorri could see there was no other island there: the fire was burning just around the point of land they were rounding. Odd and the rest were almost within arm’s reach.

  “We’ll come around this point and come ashore near as we can to where the fire’s burning,” Skorri said to the men. “Get ashore right off, round up anyone you can find. They’ll probably scatter like rats but we can round them up. Try not to kill any of them, but absolutely do not kill Odd. Do you hear? I’ll kill the man who kills Odd Thorgrimson.”

  Heads nodded. The men amidships fished out
the spears and the shields and the helmets, no easy task in the crowded boat, and passed them out to their owners.

  Skorri’s eyes were still on the rocky shoreline as it passed down the boat’s larboard side and more and more of the far side of the island came into view as they rounded the point. They came into the lee of the land and the boat sat a bit more upright as the gray ledges partially blocked the wind.

  The column of smoke was more visible now, but Skorri still could not see its source. He pictured Odd and his rescuers sitting around the fire, maybe watching a pot of porridge swinging from a chain on a tripod. He pictured their shock when they saw the boat crammed with warriors come into view. He imagined them leaping to their feet, feeling the impulse to flee, and then realizing they were trapped.

  The image gave him a deep sense of satisfaction. They might be clever, these men who had rescued Odd, but they were not more clever than Skorri Thorbrandsson.

  He pulled the tiller closer as the boat cleared the western point of the island. Now Skorri could see all of the south side of the island that had been hidden from view, the quarter mile of long gray rocky shore, interrupted by a small gravel beach, a perfect place to land. He could see the fire from which the smoke was rising, a tall stack of logs, more a bonfire than a cooking fire, burning intensely, sending its thick cloud of smoke aloft like a signal fire.

  But he could not see Odd or his rescuers. And, more crucially, he could not see their boat pulled up on the beach. And just as he was considering those facts, wondering where the boat might be, a realization came into his head as if the gods had whispered in his ear.

  They had fooled him again.

  “Bastards!” Skorri shouted and he saw a few of the men jump in surprise. “Man those sheets, we’re going about on the other tack!”

  He could see the looks of confusion on the men’s faces but they were well trained enough that they did not ask questions, simply grabbed up the sheets that held the corners of the sails and made ready to trim them in any way that Skorri saw fit.

  Skorri clenched his teeth in suppressed rage and pushed the tiller away. The boat began to turn hard, turning away from the island, and the sail began to flog as the wind took it from the wrong angle. The men on the thwarts hauled on the sheets, turning the yard overhead, elbows thumping into neighbors as they tried to work in the tight pack of men. But no one protested, no one spoke.

  The boat came around until it was pointed in the direction they had just come, going back over the water they had just covered, or as near to it as they could get on the opposite tack. Skorri’s face was set in a scowl, his squinting eyes looking out to the horizon, but the island was still in the way.

  Everything he had thought was correct. They would not have gone far in the boat. They would have wanted to stop, and they would have stopped on an island. But they would not have built a fire. Of course they would not have built a fire. It would give them away. Skorri thought it had given them away. But he realized now it had been meant to draw him to the island. Why else would the fire have been built so big, built to send off so much smoke?

  “Bastards!” Skorri shouted again.

  It was not long before they had left the bulk of the island astern and once again they could see out to the open water. Skorri moved his eyes slowly along the horizon. The fishing boats were all pretty much where they had been, some shifted a few hundred yards this way or that as they chased their catch. None of them were moving with any particular speed.

  Save for one.

  Skorri could see it now, off to the north, a mile and a half away, maybe a little less. Like his own boat it had a square sail set and drawing and it was racing off up the coast, the only boat in the fleet that seemed at all eager to make distance. North, toward Fevik. Where Odd’s people lived.

  “Lord…?” Kolbein said, his voice sounding timid, and timid in Kolbein sounded strange. Skorri looked away from the distant boat and at his men crowded forward.

  “They fooled me,” Skorri said, willing to admit the truth, at least to these trusted few. “Bastards fooled me into going one way, while they’re going another. You see that boat to the north? With the sail set, running off for the horizon?”

  Heads swiveled, nodded, turned back toward Skorri. “That’s them. I’ll fall on my sword if it isn’t. And we’ll run them down and we’ll bring them to Halfdan and we’ll enjoy watching them die, and I reckon Halfdan will see that enjoyment lasts a good long time.”

  He saw eyes dart off to the west, to the dark and ugly clouds that seemed to be building up from the land itself.

  “We’ll run them down,” Skorri said again. “Or we’ll die trying. Because we’d be better off dead than going back to Halfdan stinking of failure.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  'Twas night in the dwelling, and Norns there came,

  Who shaped the life of the lofty one;

  They bade him most famed of fighters all

  And best of princes ever to be.

  The Poetic Edda

  They rode north through country that seemed as if it had been swept by the most virulent plague. There was nothing amiss: houses were standing intact, some with coals still glowing in their hearths, fences had not been torn down, the small kitchen gardens were undisturbed, as were the larger fields of barley and oats. But there was not a living creature to be seen. Not human, not animal, nothing moving save themselves and the birds that flitted through the trees and the fields.

  “It seems word of our coming has spread,” Louis de Roumois said dryly. “Bad luck, Thorgrim. I image the people took all their gold and silver with them when they ran.”

  Thorgrim made a grunting noise, the closest to a laugh he could manage. They had passed the hovels of fishermen and the sagging cottages of poor farmers and a few large, timber-built churches. Any miniscule treasure the churches might have housed would have been moved to safety at the first sign of Northmen. As to the others who lived in that miserable place, it was unlikely any would have owned a single piece of gold or silver.

  They had used caution riding through Hamtun, alert for any surprise the English might spring on them, but the village was deserted just as Gudrid had reported. The doors to houses, the gates to pens, were all gaping open. Of course the people there would have been quite aware of the bloody fight that had happened on the water just a few miles south. They would have fled their homes out of fear that the Northmen had won and would be coming for their spoils.

  Actually, they might have fled regardless. Any army meant drunkenness, looting, rape, even if it was an army of your countrymen.

  The village of Hamtun grew more sparse as they moved away from the water, fading at last into open country, and still there was no one to be seen. It was clear that an army had moved through there, and not long before. The muddy road was deeply pockmarked by the passage of hundreds of men on foot and horseback, and dozens of heavy-laden carts.

  It was something less than an army that Thorgrim was leading in their wake. A dozen people, no more. Gudrid, Hall, Godi, Vali, Failend. The warriors he had come to trust as much as he trusted himself. There were not many. And Louis de Roumois, as well.

  Starri was there, of course. Thorgrim would have asked Starri to join them anyway, but he did not have to because Starri was going to come no matter what anyone said to him.

  Harald was also with them. Thorgrim had wrestled with that choice. Under normal circumstances there would have been no question, but Thorgrim was still not pleased with Harald’s behavior, not happy that Harald seemed to take no responsibility for his own mistakes, showed no sort of remorse. The younger men still seemed to look on Harald as if he was some kind of champion and Harald still seemed to believe it was true. The Norns who controlled the fates of men did not much care for hubris.

  But Harald, of all the men there, was the one who Thorgrim most trusted, even when he was playing the ass. And for the final weight on the scale, Harald, with his surprising knack for language, was the only one among them w
ho could speak passable English.

  Thorgrim had not asked Harald to come. Rather he told him he would be coming and he told Harald he might bring one of Dragon’s crew if he wished. Thorgrim had guessed he would ask Herjolf, with whom he seemed to have struck up a friendship. Herjolf had just shown himself to be a brave fighter, throwing his small ship in the path of the big English longship.

  But Harald had asked someone else, a young man about Harald’s own age named Brand, who had an active, intelligent quality about him, so Thorgrim agreed.

  A few others of Sea Hammer’s crew rounded out the dozen, and that was all that Thorgrim wished. This whole raid, the passage up the bay, the intention of landing in Hamtun, the bloody sea battle, had come about because Thorgrim felt he owed it to Bergthor and to those of his men who were still eager for plunder. They had made for Winchester because the Briton Geldwine had convinced Bergthor there were riches to be had there. They had been attacked and they had been beaten and now they did not even know where their enemy had gone.

  Thorgrim was done.

  Done listening to the suggestions of others, done considering anything save for the safety and riches of his own men, and his desire to get back to his farm in Vik. He was done learning second and third hand about what was happening around him. Done hearing about the wonders of Winchester. It was time for him to go and see for himself, to decide for himself, based on what he saw with his own eyes, whether it was worth spending one more drop of blood on this quest. Then he would make a decision, and the others were free to agree with him or not.

  Bergthor seemed happy enough to do what Thorgrim told him. Along with rounding up the cattle for the sacrifice for the dead, he and his men had come up with twenty horses, and all but four had saddles and bridles. They had all been gathered up within five miles of where the Northmen had come ashore. Some had been left behind as their owners fled the invaders. Some had been given up after their riders were convinced it was in their best interest to do so.