by Angus Donald
‘No, oh no.’ Bjarki was struggling again to rise. ‘I know where he’s gone. To Bago. We have to stop him. Or… oh, gods. Tor, help me up.’
‘You’re not going anywhere; let alone walking up to Bago!’
‘We’ll take a ship. The Svear dragon-ships, they’re still here, yes? It will be faster, anyway, and he has a long head start on us. It will give me a chance to heal a little, as well. Come on, Tor! Every moment is precious!’
Chapter Thirty-three
The reckoning
Hildar Torfinnsson ignored the main entrance of the barricaded longhouse in Bago and went in straight through the east wall, hacking through rough wattle-and-daub exterior and thin inner planks with his axe.
It took him no more than a few moments, and his huge fur-clad shoulders were erupting into the gloomy interior, like a monstrous chick emerging from the egg. His humming had reached the pitch of fury.
A doddering greybeard tried to stand in his way and Hildar skewered him through the loins with the ancient sword and, turning and swinging the bloody axe with his other hand, he hewed the head clean off the howling matron who tried to stab him in the belly with her roasting spit.
The rest of the inhabitants cowered by the long rectangular fire-trough in the centre of the hall, resigned to their fate, all except for a white-faced boy, who charged at the Rekkr from the shadows, yelling shrilly, the sharp eating knife in his hand. Hildar killed him with a sideways flick of the axe, a casual, almost friendly blow, which smashed the little boy’s right cheekbone into several pieces, driving the shards deep into his small skull.
Hildar loomed over the last few folk huddled by the long hearth, breathing from his exertions. His gaze crawled all over them like a fly on a freshly made corpse. Then he fixed on one of the older girls, a pretty blonde.
‘Freya, my sweet,’ he said. The words were clogged in his throat, as if they were too large or too jagged to come out. ‘I have come… for you.’
‘You leave her be, Father,’ said Bjarki, stepping heavily through the wreckage of wattle-and-daub kindling beside the hole in the wall. He had a drawn sword in his right hand, an unsheathed seax in his left.
‘My son,’ gurgled Hildar, ‘my Rekkr son!’ turning from the fire-trough. He saw a smaller, slimmer shape emerge behind Bjarki’s huge form.
‘There’s my sweet daughter, too. Come, give your old father a kiss.’
Tor stared at him; she looked slowly around the longhouse, noting the headless corpse, the skull-smashed child and the cowering survivors.
‘You have no idea how much I missed you, Father,’ she said. ‘I grieved for you, every day of my childhood. I wept for you, I prayed for your spirit to come back to me, even though I knew in my heart what you had done to my mother. I built my life around a memory, a false memory, of your greatness. I would be like Hildar Torfinnsson, I told myself, and anyone who would listen. I would be a hero, a Rekkr, the greatest of all warriors.’
Tor swallowed painfully. ‘Then I met you. Alive… in the flesh. Not conveniently dead as I had always pictured you. I saw what you truly are.’
‘I am still your father,’ said Hildar, staring at her. His eyes were huge.
‘I don’t think you are,’ Tor said. ‘My real father is dead. He’s been dead a long time, and I venerate his memory. Perhaps he never existed at all. But you are a monster – a slab of horror on two legs. You’ve gone Galálar.’
‘Words,’ said Hildar. ‘Pretty little words. Come, kiss me, daughter.’
‘Keep your distance, Tor,’ said Bjarki. Then, looking at the pathetic little group crouched by the hearth fire, he said: ‘Freya, it’s me, Bjarki, remember? Come away from that man. Now. Come round here behind me.’
The blonde girl hesitated only for a moment and then scampered over to him, widely skirting Hildar, and coming to shelter behind Bjarki’s bulk.
‘I wasn’t going to hurt her, son,’ said Hildar, he sounded deeply insulted by the suggestion. ‘I was going to bring her back to your bed. You said you were forced to part from her by these nithings, these vermin—’
‘Vermin?’ Tor was barely able to control her own rage now. She had a naked sword in her hand. ‘That’s how you see them. So you killed them all.’
‘They were cruel to my boy,’ said Hildar plaintively. ‘I paid Olaf Karlsson handsomely – a big bag of hack silver – to raise my Bjarki, but he cheated me. He was cruel. He wanted to hang my boy by the neck—’
‘So you killed him,’ said Tor. ‘I saw Olaf’s body in the street, with the others. You slew the whole village: the mothers, their babies, the children.’
Bjarki had shooed Freya into a dark corner and was moving clumsily around the hearth trough, circling Hildar. Widening the angle between him and Tor. He moved stiffly, dragging his left leg a little, he looked horribly thin and weak, as if even a moderate puff of wind could knock him over. Even the weight of his long sword seemed too much for him.
‘We have to take you before the Thing,’ Bjarki said, gritting his teeth against the pain of his wounds. ‘For justice. You have killed folk with no good cause. You must answer for it, Father. We’ve a ship on the beach; if you submit to us, we’ll bind you and take you to the king of the Danes.’
Hildar threw back his head and laughed, a horrible crackling sound.
‘You make a fine jest, son,’ he said. ‘We both know how this must end. I am Galálar. Torfinna knows it well enough too, don’t you, my girl?’
‘I’m not your girl,’ she said. ‘But, yes, I know how this must end.’
‘He doesn’t look as if he could fight off a crippled kitten,’ said Hildar, jerking his head towards Bjarki. ‘But you, my girl, my beautiful, brave and fiery daughter – your mother, whom you so resemble, sent you to practise sword-work with the boys. We shall see now if you ever learnt anything.’
Hildar flew at Tor; impossibly fast. He moved as smoothly as a leopard and before Tor could properly react, he had struck at her with the long axe, a vicious downward chop that would have divided her skull – if it had landed.
Tor got the sword up just in time and deflected the massive axe strike to her left – but the force of the blow knocked her to her knees and the blade thudded into the beaten earth of the rush-strewn hall floor beside her left leg.
Hildar howled in pain. And Tor saw that Bjarki, behind and to the left of the Rekkr, had lunged with his sword and jammed the steel point into his lower back. Hildar shuddered, as if he was throwing off the pain; he whirled, fast as a whip and the axe lashed out horizontally, hurtling towards Bjarki’s unguarded belly. The young man leapt back, stumbling, staggering, and the sharp blade merely sliced through a fold in his baggy grey tunic as it passed.
Tor, still on the ground, flailed with her sword. The blade whacked into Hildar’s calf, cutting into the bulge of muscle. Once more the Rekkr cried out in pain. He turned fast and smashed the axe down at Tor’s prone body.
She rolled, and rolled again, becoming tangled with a pile of pots and pans. The axe clanged against an iron skillet. The other people in the longhouse, the Bago villagers who yet lived, were scrambling for the hole in the wall, scurrying away from the hissing blades. Hildar lashed the axe down at Tor again, and again she just managed to squirm out of its lethal path.
Behind him, Bjarki took a staggering step forward and swung his long sword; the blade thunked into Hildar’s right side, opening a dark gash in his lower chest. Bright scarlet blood bubbled out immediately. Hildar was now panting hard, still grinning like a madman, but running with gore from three fresh wounds. Yet he was not finished. He stood swaying, swiped at Bjarki with the axe; a half-hearted blow, yet Bjarki dodged only with difficulty.
Tor was back on her feet by now, she raised the bloody sword high above her head and hacked down at Hildar’s shoulder; the blade slicing in deep, almost severing his right arm. The long axe slipped from Hildar’s wet fingers. He fell to his knees by the fire-trough, his weight thumping down hard. He was facing both his child
ren now, weaponless, bleeding.
He lifted his dripping chin, looked straight into Bjarki’s blue eyes.
‘You’re a good boy,’ he said, his voice raw with pain. ‘And you, too, daughter of mine. You both make me proud. Now, enough! Finish it.’
Bjarki dropped his seax. He took a double grip on his sword hilt. The blade swung, hard and level. And Hildar’s head jumped from his shoulders.
* * *
Bjarki had to lean heavily on Tor’s shoulder, but he stood more or less upright before Freya in the street outside the longhouse and said his piece.
‘We have been apart for a year now, my love,’ he said softly. ‘And even now I do not mean to remain in Bago for more than a day or two. But I once made a solemn oath to you, and I mean to honour it…’
The girl looked bewildered, as if she had never seen this huge, blood-splashed man before in her life. She was still very pretty, Bjarki noted, but somehow she seemed a little less lovely, less perfect than he remembered. He was struggling with his exhaustion, and the pain of his many wounds, so recently abused, ripped open in the fight with Hildar. He could not grasp on to the slippery words. He mumbled: ‘I’m going to go east… there is a place I have been promised… good farmland, by the sea. A good place. Duke Leszko’s land. But it needs a wife… to come with… Do you want…?’
He ran out of speech then and just stared at her dumbly.
‘This oaf wants you to go with him. To be his woman on some remote farmstead in the east,’ said Tor. ‘Bear his snotty children; that family stuff.’
Freya said: ‘But… but…’
‘If you’re worried about me, I’m his sister. Half-sister. But I can tell you that he’s a good man. Bit stubborn sometimes. But brave and kind.’
‘But,’ said Freya. She too seemed to be lost for words. She gestured mutely at a white-haired young man who was standing on the fringe of the small circle of Bago survivors. He stepped forward nervously. Tor saw that he had a swaddled baby in his arms, a chubby infant only a few months old. Then she recognised him. It was Freki Olafsson, once of His Majesty’s Auxilla; the boy who had been paid gold by Lord Grimoald to murder her Bjarki in his sleep.
‘Freki is my man,’ said Freya. ‘He has been since… since you left.’
Bjarki stared at Freki, and at the baby. He felt a flush of blood through his whole body. Then anger, a pure, black, boiling rage. He heard his gandr whisper: ‘Kill them all. She betrayed you. He tried to murder you, let me in; let me in now, and we’ll take a sweet, sweet revenge.’
He glared at Freki, and the baby again – then let out a long, long breath.
‘Congratulations to you both, Freya and Freki,’ he said. ‘I wish you joy of your family with all my heart. May the Bear guard you all your days.’
With that Bjarki turned, and began to hobble painfully down the street.
Epilogue
One month later
Bjarki wiped the sweat from his brow, and threw down the muddy spade. That was the last of them. All now properly buried at last.
He looked round to see where Tor was and saw that she was sitting on the grass by another of the freshly dug mass graves filled with the Groves of Eresburg folk, playing with Garm, getting the cub to chase a pretty black-and-white magpie feather on a string. The bear was not so little now, he saw. It had grown alarmingly in the past month, and its playful bites and clumsy paw-strikes were becoming surprisingly powerful.
One day, probably quite soon, they would have to think about what to do with him. A full-grown bear was not an ideal travelling companion. The food requirement alone could make things very difficult. And what if Garm grew too hungry and ate somebody? But that was a problem for another day.
The sun was shining, the river was gurgling merrily in the centre of the valley, and the hard work was done, for today at least. Gunnar was approaching him from the direction of the high valley-island that held charred ruins of the groves. He was pushing a barrow full of muddy tools and had a solemn expression on his face.
‘Valtyr wants to say the old prayers around the remains of the Irminsul before supper,’ he said. ‘With all of us. You’re finished here, are you?’
Bjarki nodded. ‘I’ll be there,’ he said. ‘As long as he doesn’t plan to go on too long. I need to get to bed early. I’m off in the morning, first light.’
‘You don’t have to go, you know,’ said Gunnar, putting a hand on his brawny arm. ‘You could stay here a few months, help us get things going. Heal yourself fully. Get stronger. Teach us; share what you know about the gandir. It would be useful. Tor could be the master-of-arms, make all the novices jump. You’d be Father of the Bear Lodge, when we’ve rebuilt it.’
‘You don’t need me, Gunnar. You’ll manage just fine without me.’
‘We do need you, Bjarki. You’re the last of them, you know. All the others are dead – Theodoric, Angantyr, Nikka the Dreamer… all of them gone… You are the last of the Fire Born. The last berserkr. You can’t deny us your knowledge. What would the Fyr Skola be without a single Rekkr?’
‘That’s just the point. I don’t want to be a Rekkr; I don’t choose to live that life – they all die too young. I want the chance to see the world a little before I start knocking on the door of the Hall of the Slain. I don’t want to end up like my father, Galálar, killing for pleasure, murdering ordinary folk for no good reason…’ He paused for breath, fighting off unexpected tears.
‘Anyway, Gunnar, you’ll soon find some more people just like me.’ Bjarki sniffed and roughly cuffed his wet nose. ‘Valtyr brought in two boys just yesterday, twins – Fidor and Fodor – he says they are both very talented and both likely to find their gandr very soon.’
‘Will you come back and visit us?’ Gunnar sounded wistful.
‘Of course, I’ll visit whenever I’m passing… and I’m sure Tor will, too.’ Bjarki could not look at his friend. He could foresee no circumstances in which he would be passing the Groves of Eresburg again. He was bound for Brenna, to find the long-haired man and take up his offer of a farmstead by the sea and swear an oath – with the gods’ blessing the last oath he would ever make; and he meant to stay there in the east until he was old and grey.
As they strolled together up the long track to the summit of the Groves, towards the One Tree, they chatted of less painful things. ‘The rumour is the Duke of Swabia is not dead,’ Gunnar said. ‘He’s very badly wounded, Valtyr says, near to death, but Francia’s healers are working on him night and day. Karolus is fighting in Lombardy – winning victories, or so I hear.’
‘Do you think Karolus will come back and attack you here again?’
‘Maybe. Widukind is harassing the retreating Red Cloaks with all the unwounded Saxon troops he has. I suppose I should call him Duke Widukind now that his father, Theodoric, is gone. He will make a good duke, I think. He seems a good soldier – resourceful, brave, even rather cunning.
‘Francia is not defeated,’ Gunnar went on, ‘the battle of the Dane-Work was a small setback, a humiliation for Karolus. But the war is not over. Francia is vast, and they have the manpower to come at us again – you know this better than I, Bjarki. So, yes, maybe, they’ll be back here again.’
They had reached the top of the track and were approaching the charred ruins of the groves. The beginnings of a new, stronger perimeter wall were being constructed by a handful of Angrian volunteers, farmers from north of the forest, and the air was filled with the crack of axes and the rasp of saws.
‘You see that tall construction there.’ Gunnar pointed to a rickety watchtower that soared up in the blue sky, one of several new buildings in the fire-blasted landscape. ‘We’ll keep a Barda up there day and night, and when the Red Cloaks come again, if they come, we’ll all hide in the First Forest. Some of us are quite expert at that, you know,’ he said, and grinned.
* * *
They all gathered that evening around the charred One Tree in a loose circle. They were too few to join hands and make a ring ar
ound the massive blackened trunk: and only a few of them there were former denizens of the Fyr Skola – Eldar the gothi, his friend Gunnar, Eric the big, slow-witted Barda who had fought with them on the west rampart, and Valtyr Far-Traveller, too, of course, who would be taking on the role of Mikelgothi.
The rest were new faces: the twins Fidor and Fodor, who were refugees from Frank-occupied Westphalia; and a strange raven-haired girl, half-mad with hunger, who had just turned up unannounced out of the First Forest…
Humble beginnings. And Bjarki was glad that the Fyr Skola would continue to exist – even if he meant to have nothing more to do with it.
He stood beside Tor and looked up at the blackened branches of the Irminsul. As Valtyr began to chant the prayer to the ancient spirits of the First Forest, Bjarki looked up into the twisted limbs of the mighty oak. And there on a high branch, just visible, he saw a little sprig of green, a new leaf.
Historical Note
There has been a spate of stories in the media in recent years that seek to persuade us that our traditional image of the Viking – the ferocious Northman, hairy, merciless and intent only on plunder and rapine – is completely wrong. The Norse people, we are now told, were in fact peaceful traders not rampaging psychopaths, folk who cared deeply about their personal hygiene and appearance, as evidenced by their combs, tweezers and the copious use of make-up by men.
This may well be true. But they were also warriors, from a society that revered strength and courage, and which produced epic poems about war and bloody revenge, about oaths and honour. They were living in a time of almost continual conflict and frequent violence, and often grew up in harsh lands in an unforgiving climate where making any kind of living required a certain grit and ruthlessness.
So, if you were a defenceless Christian monk in a remote monastery, sitting on a trove of gold and silver church accoutrements and praying for the Lord to deliver you from the fury of the approaching fleet of dragon-ships, you were probably about to experience first-hand a less-cuddly side of their culture.
