The Dream of the Iron Dragon: An Alternate History Viking Epic (Saga of the Iron Dragon Book 1)

by Robert Kroese

  “Did you ask him about the horses? Hestar?” Reyes asked. She didn’t have a clue what horses sold for, but their rarity in this area suggested they were extremely valuable. The only other horses she’d seen since they’d landed were a few scraggly, stout beasts used as pack animals or plow horses. Gabe had said Harald would have had to ship the Frisians across the sea from mainland Europe.

  Sigurd nodded and turned back to Dag. Another terse exchange followed. Dag seemed interested, but one name kept coming up in his responses: Harald.

  Sigurd sighed, turning back to Reyes. “Hestar Haralds,” he said, holding up his palms.

  “Everybody knows they’re Harald’s horses,” Gabe said. “He’d be taking a big risk by accepting them.”

  “He could sell them,” Reyes said. “They shipped them across the ocean once, and if we leave early we’ll be short on crew anyway. If there’s room on the ships….”

  “You want to share a Viking longboat with seven horses?” Gabe asked.

  “They got them here somehow.”

  “Probably on a knarr. A cargo ship. And he’d have to find a buyer, somebody who’s not averse to acquiring horses stolen from the King of Norway. I don’t think it’s going to happen. Not in time for us to escape Harald, anyway.”

  While Reyes and Gabe spoked, Sigurd and Dag continued their negotiations. After some time, they seemed to make progress.

  At last, Sigurd nodded. He turned to Reyes and Gabe. “Yes. Vér forum á morgun.” He held up a finger.

  “We leave tomorrow,” Reyes said, breathing a sigh of relief. But there was a look of concern on Sigurd’s face. It seemed there was a catch. “All of us?” Reyes asked. “O’Brien and Slater?”

  Sigurd nodded, holding up seven fingers. “Sjau hestar.” He bit his lip, seeming unsure how to make himself clear. At last he said, “Hestar. Dauðir.”

  “Dauðir?” Reyes asked.

  “Dêaðwêrig,” Sigurd said, looking at Gabe.

  “What is he saying?” Reyes asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Gabe said. “It sounds like… dead. Dead horses?”

  Sigurd nodded. “Dead horses,” he repeated.

  “No,” Reyes replied. “The horses aren’t dead.”

  “Hestar Haralds,” Sigurd said, holding up his palms. “Kjöt. Engar hestar.”

  Reyes frowned. “Gabe, what in hell is he saying?”

  Sigurd stood up, patting the knife at his belt and then drawing a finger across his throat.

  “Oh, God,” Reyes said. “Please, Gabe. Tell me he’s not saying what I think he’s saying.”

  Sigurd pointed to his mouth. “Kjöt. Matur.”

  They knew the second word: Matur was food.

  “I think he’s saying what you think he’s saying,” Gabe said. “The Norsemen ate horsemeat.”

  Reyes stared at him in horror. “But they can’t! Gabe, those horses are beautiful! They can’t murder them for food!”

  Sigurd seemed puzzled at Reyes’s vehemence. “Ertu kristinn?” he asked.

  “I don’t understand,” Reyes replied.

  “He’s asking if you’re a Christian,” Gabe said. “Christians had a taboo against eating horses. The Scandinavians only stopped eating horse after the Christians outlawed it.”

  Reyes hesitated, unsure how to answer. She’d been raised Catholic, but hadn’t thought much about her faith since joining the IDL. In any case, she was a long way removed from any historical taboo Christians had about eating horses. Most colonists ate synthesized protein, and a movement had arisen to make consuming animal meat illegal across all systems, but it had stalled in the face of the war effort. On many worlds, such as Geneva, hunting was necessary to keep animal populations in check. Reyes had eaten venison and rabbit, as well as farmed chicken, turkey and salmon. But horses were kept only for recreational riding and show purposes. Eating one of these huge, magnificent animals just seemed wrong.

  “Nei,” she said. “Hestar nei matur.”

  Dag turned to Sigurd, an exasperated expression on his face.

  “Reyes, they’re animals,” Gabe said. “I don’t want to see them killed any more than you do, but it’s the only way we can—”

  “It’s not the only way!” Reyes snapped. “It’s stupid and pointless. These are smart, beautiful, elegant animals, and they’re the only reason we managed to get away from Harald in one piece. They’ve done everything we asked of them, and this is how we repay them? It’s wrong, Gabe. It’s just wrong. These horses didn’t ask to get in the middle of this stupid war.”

  “None of us asked for this, Reyes. If you want to cry, cry over the hundred Norsemen I slaughtered at the lander. You think those guys had a choice? You think they woke up that morning and said, ‘I think I’ll throw myself at a fucking railgun today?’ They did what they had to do—what they thought they needed to do to survive. I mowed them down. And for what? For nothing. I had to blow up the lander anyway. This is all fucking pointless, Reyes. The question is whether we’re going to keep going anyway. If you want to stay here in Uslu until Ari throws us out or Harald attacks, I won’t argue. Just tell me what the plan is.”

  Reyes was silent for a moment, taken aback by Gabe’s outburst. Sigurd and Dag were staring at her, waiting for her to make a decision. She wondered if they should ask O’Brien and Slater for their input. After all, they were in this together. Slater had been particularly taken with the horses. Would she go along with selling them to Dag, knowing they’d be butchered for meat? And if she didn’t, then what? Gabe was right: if they turned down this deal, they would have to beg Ari to let them stay in Uslu, provoking Harald to attack. And how many people would die in that assault?

  No, Reyes had accepted command of this mission, and she had pledged to keep their party alive and together. Their best chance—their only chance—was to go south with the raiders.

  “All right,” she said, turning to Dag. “Take the horses.”

  *****

  They made their way to the shore at dawn the next morning. The temperature had dropped overnight, and a steady wind continued to blow from the south. A dozen or so men were already milling about, loading supplies from carts and checking oars, sails and riggings. Dozens more people—mostly women but a few children and older men—huddled together in the gray light, saying their goodbyes to the departing men. Each man stood next to a heavy sea chest that contained everything he would be taking on the journey. The only Norsemen Reyes recognized were those that had gone with her to rescue Gabe: Sigurd, Njáll, Agnar, Brynjarr and Braggi.

  Reyes and the other spacemen stood apart, shivering in the cold and trying to stay out of the way. They’d each been supplied with a fully stocked chest as part of the deal they had made with Dag. O’Brien and Slater hadn’t been told what they’d had to do to get Dag to agree to an early departure; they knew only that they’d traded the horses. Reyes and Gabe had agreed there was nothing to gain in telling them more. This voyage was going to be enough of a challenge for them without the added weight of the deaths of innocent animals on their consciences.

  The four boats—called Bylgjasverð, Hreindýr, Sjóhestr and Ísbátr—rested in a line on the shore a few paces apart, water lapping at their bows. These were medium-sized longboats, called snekkja by the Norsemen. Similar in size and appearance, each was roughly seventeen meters long and two-and-a-half meters wide, with twenty sets of oars. Two men would man each oar, for a total of forty oarsmen. An additional man—the coxswain—would sit at the rear of the boat, controlling the steering oar and shouting orders to the oarsmen. A sail of woven wool cloth hung from a halyard secured to a heavy wood mast that was nearly as tall as the ship was long. The sails were currently furled to the halyard and would remain so until the boats were well offshore. Just below the sail, over the heads of the men on the ship, was a wooden rack supported by two vertical poles. On top of the rack, parallel to the strakes of the boat, lay the oars. All four snekkjas were adorned with intricately carved dragon figureheads.

&n
bsp; The boats had decks made of removable planks, below which were storage holds for food and other supplies. Dag Erikson stood a few paces down the beach, shouting orders at the men loading provisions into the holds. The mood was tense. Many of the men had been up late drinking the previous night; they’d been roused early in the morning and informed the expedition would be leaving four days early. Even with the newcomers, the expedition was sixteen men short, which meant that each boat was down four crew members. That wouldn’t be a problem as long as they were under sail, but rowing would be that much harder. Reaching the coast of Europe was expected to take three or four days, depending on the wind. They hoped to make a brief stop on the Frisian coast before continuing west.

  “So the plan is to travel to Normandy?” Slater asked, shouting to be heard over the wind blowing in their faces.

  “Ultimately, yes,” said Reyes. “I understand we’ll be sailing south to Denmark first. They don’t have any instruments to speak of, so they have to navigate by the sun and stars. If they can keep the coastline in sight, it makes it a lot easier.”

  “Forgive my ignorance,” Slater said, “but you said ‘sailing.’ Isn’t Denmark south of here?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “Because the wind is coming from the south,” Slater said. “Looks to me like we’re going to be doing a lot of rowing.”

  “Not necessarily,” said O’Brien, standing next to her. He was still in some pain from his cracked ribs, but was able to stand for short periods of time. As the only one among them with sailing experience, he was particularly interested in seeing the Norsemen prepare for their voyage. “The Vikings figured out how to tack against the wind. Basically, you turn your sail at an angle to the wind, letting it push you sideways. Some of that force gets channeled into forward motion, so you end up traveling at an angle, moving toward your destination at the same time as you’re being pushed to the side. Then you come about, letting the wind push you the other way for a while. You keep zig-zagging like that until you get to your destination.”

  “If you say so,” Slater replied. “It sounds impossible. And I say that as someone who flies giant metal sky ships for a living.”

  “It’s not easy, that’s for sure,” O’Brien said. “Even with a modern sailboat with a triangular sail, it takes some skill, and you’ve got to have some speed to make it work at all. With the shallow draft of these boats and the short keel, it would be even harder. I sure wouldn’t want to try it.”

  Slater raised an eyebrow at him. “You’re not reassuring me, O’Brien.”

  O’Brien shrugged, and then winced. “The Vikings were the greatest sailors of their day. If anybody can do it, these guys can. And they’ve got a strong, steady headwind, which should make it easier.”

  Dag approached them, pointing Sigurd and his men to Ísbátr and the spacemen to Sjóhestr. Sigurd protested, shaking his head. Reyes couldn’t follow much of their exchange, but it was clear that Sigurd was not going to be separated from either his own men or the spacemen. Dag, now red-faced with frustration, finally relented. The nine of them were assigned to the front of the last boat. Gabe and Sigurd climbed in first. Agnar and Brynjarr then lifted O’Brien on his stretcher to them. Once O’Brien was safely aboard, the others climbed in. Reyes and Slater arranged a bed on the second row for O’Brien while the others hoisted the chests aboard. They arranged the chests in lines, just behind the oar holes in the gunwale. The sturdy wooden chests, of a roughly uniform shape and size, would serve as benches for the duration of the journey. Sigurd and Gabe sat on the outside of the first row, with Reyes and Slater between them. Njáll, Brynjarr, Agnar and Braggi sat behind them. The next several rows were men who had volunteered for the expedition. About half of them were from Uslu or nearby settlements; the rest had traveled from the valley, Vestfold or even farther west to take part in the raiding. The last few rows were empty; a dozen or so men remained on shore, waiting to push the boat into the water.

  Sigurd and his men introduced themselves to the other Norsemen, exchanging pleasantries and wishes of goodwill for the voyage. Each boat had a coxswain who had been personally selected by Dag. The coxswain of Ísbátr was a jovial, red-haired man named Skeggi. As he joked and laughed with the crew, Reyes could feel the tension draining from the air. She gathered that some of the men had been grumbling that leaving early—and leaving behind those who were still on their way to Uslu—was a bad omen for the voyage. But Skeggi put them at ease, and a spirit of hopefulness and adventure seemed to come over the men.

  At long last, the first boat, Bylgjasverð, pushed out into the fjord. Cheers went up from the men on the boats and on shore as the long, graceful figure of Bylgjasverð slid into the water. As the stern came free from the beach, the men running behind leaped and pulled themselves into the boat. Hreindýr came next, and Sjóhestr after that. When Sjóhestr had launched, the men behind Ísbátr leaned into the stern, grunting and heaving forward. It picked up momentum and finally slid free of the shore. The men clambered into the boat, splashing and hooting in the cold water. Those still on the shore waved and shouted goodbyes.

  Skeggi shouted, “Ára!” and Reyes turned to see a pair of men a few rows behind her stand up and take down one of the oars from the rack overhead. They handed the oar down to the men next to them. While these men passed the oar forward, the pair removed another oar from the rack. Sigurd reached over to open a small shutter that covered the opening for the oar and motioned for Gabe to do the same on his side. Behind them, the others sitting closest to the gunwales opened the other shutters. The first oar was passed to Sigurd, who turned it perpendicular to the gunwale and threaded it through the slotted opening, stopping when the butt end of the oar was in front of Reyes. She took hold of it, mimicking his grip, and he nodded. Gabe did the same with the oar that was handed to him, and he and Slater held it while the other oars were put into place. Glancing back, Reyes was amazed at the speed and precision with which the men worked. Less than two minutes after Skeggi shouted his order, the oars were ready.

  Skeggi emitted a monosyllabic shout, and the men leaned forward, pushing their oars with them. With the exception of the first row, which lagged a bit, the men moved as one. The oars hit the water. Skeggi gave another shout and the men pulled and leaned back. This time the first row moved in sync, but the oar pulled by Gabe and Slater skipped along the surface of the water, smacking into the oar behind it. Gabe murmured an apology to Braggi, in front of him, but Braggi just laughed. On the next push, they made sure to submerge the flat of the oar. After a few more tries, they were moving in time with the rest of the men.

  As they sank into a rhythm, Skeggi’s gruff chant turned into a baritone song. Many of the other men joined in. In the distance, they could hear the rowers on the other ships singing a different song, but to the same rhythm.

  “What happened to sailing?” Slater shouted. She had already worked up a sweat from the exertion.

  “They’ll want to be on the open sea, where the wind is consistent,” O’Brien said from behind her. He was standing with his hand on the gunwale, too excited to lie down. “Tacking requires a lot of open space and room for error. We don’t want to be blown back into the shore.”

  They rowed until mid-afternoon, when Skeggi at last gave the order to pull in the oars. Reyes had never felt such relief. Her arms continued to burn long after they stopped rowing. Skeggi gave another series of orders, and four men seated near the center of the boat began to work on unfurling the sails. In the distance, Reyes saw that the other crews were doing the same. Bylgjasverð’s sail, already unfurled, was barely visible on the horizon. The boats had maintained a roughly constant distance from each other, with the first ship just visible to the last, traveling in a straight line. Now, though, the other ships were well off to starboard and heading farther west. Whether they had passed some landmark that signaled it was time to unfurl the sails or Skeggi was just following the lead of the other ships, Reyes couldn’t say. She saw now that the sails were con
structed of vertical panels of woven wool cloth that had been stitched together. The panels alternated in color, with a neutral beige or tawny color accented by panels that had been died blue or red. The stripes on Ísbátr’s sail were a deep blue.

  Once Ísbátr’s sail was unfurled and its riggings were secured, Skeggi brought the boat about, using the steering oar and the boat’s forward momentum to bring it in line with the others. The boat’s sails were trimmed close, nearly parallel with the ship’s keel. The wind caught the sail and Reyes’s heart leaped in her chest as the boat began leaning to port. But the keel and the Ísbátr’s momentum kept the ship upright, and soon Ísbátr was skimming across the water again, heading southeast. The crew erupted into cheers. For some time, at least, they’d get a respite from rowing.

  The boats were now heading southwest along the rocky coast of southern Norway, which was visible over the starboard gunwale. The coast seemed to extend in a southwesterly direction as far as they could see; if the wind held steady, they’d be able to stay on this heading for some time. They were on their way.

  Chapter Thirty

  Dan O’Brien was dozing in the bow of the ship when he heard the alarm. Men shouting, but not merely to be heard above the surf: there was an edge in their voices, something that portended danger.

  Pulling himself slowly into a sitting position, he saw several men pointing at something over the starboard bow. No, not something. Several somethings. A fleet of ships.

  There were at least six of them, and more might be hidden over the horizon. They were larger than the snekkjas of the raiding expedition, and they were getting closer. The ships were tacking southeast, on course to intersect the snekkjas’ course at near right angles. There was no question of the fleet’s intentions, given its course. Someone had gotten word of their departure to Harald or one of his lieutenants, who had redirected the fleet to intercept them. Skeggi stood at Ísbátr’s stern, waiting for a signal from the other boats. The crew sat in silence, waiting for instructions from Skeggi.