The Voyage of the Iron Dragon

by Robert Kroese

  O’Brien watched nervously as the canoes came alongside Sjávarbotn, the natives easily matching the pace of the knar with their oars. He now counted twenty-six canoes, with two men in each. The twenty-five Norsemen were badly outnumbered, and the little canoes would easily outmaneuver the big Viking ship. If hostilities broke out in earnest, they’d all be dead before they could get the rifles from the hold.

  As the men furled the sails and retrieved the oars, Sjávarbotn approached the shipyard on the inlet to the starboard side. Three ships—a long, sleek snekkja, a squat karve, and a voluminous knar like the Sjávarbotn—were taking shape on a narrow, sandy beach. Men with hammers and axes, their torsos naked, stopped working to watch as the procession passed. This was Camp Wilbur, the shipbuilding offshoot of Camp Orville, the lumber operation farther upriver. O’Brien counted fourteen men, none of them Vikings.

  The procession continued another mile upriver, the Norsemen grunting at their oars, fighting the ever-strengthening current. The forest on both sides of the river enclosed them like the walls of a canyon. Ahead, O’Brien spotted the massive timber bridge that spanned the river, along with its attached waterwheel and guardhouse. Soon they began to see docks, small buildings near the shore, and other signs of civilization. Following the gesticulations of the Skraeling with the braided hair, Fritjof directed his men toward a sandy patch of shore. As Sjávarbotn approached the shore, men began to stow their oars and jump into the water, guiding the ship to a halt on the sand. When they had stopped, O’Brien helped Dorian to his feet, and together he and Fritjof lowered the engineer over the gunwale. Dorian sank to the ground on his hands and knees, pale and disheveled, looking like he might literally kiss the ground.

  Most of the canoes had already slid onto the shore next to Sjávarbotn, and the Skraelings were now regarding the newcomers cautiously, bows at their sides. The man with the braided hair approached Fritjof, stopped before him and spoke a few words. He pointed toward a path leading through the woods, then to the sword at Fritjof’s side and finally to the boat.

  “I think he said we’re to leave our weapons with the ship and come with him,” Fritjof said.

  “Did he?” O’Brien said flatly, eyeing the man. “Do you know this man? Who are these people?”

  “They are of the Mi’kmaq tribe,” Fritjof said. “Aengus employs them for many tasks, but I do not know this man. I cannot even say for certain they are in Aengus’s employ. We have never received such a greeting in the past.”

  “Tell him I am O’Brien, a chief from the land of Eidejel, and he would do well to treat me with respect.” O’Brien couldn’t say for certain what the Indians were up to, but he suspected the man with the braided hair was testing him.

  “I only know about twenty words in their language,” Fritjof said.

  “Is one of them ‘chief’?” O’Brien asked, his eyes still affixed on the Indian, who stared coldly back at him.

  Fritjof spoke his own name, tapping his chest. Then he spoke another word, pointing to the boat. The Indian didn’t respond. Fritjof pointed to O’Brien. “O’Brien,” he said, and then spoke another word, which O’Brien took to be the Mi’kmaq word for “chief.”

  The man seemed unimpressed. He pointed to his own chest and said, “Chegaoo.” He spoke several more sentences, pointing to the boat and then the path. He then gestured toward his own men, standing around him. When he’d finished, he stared at O’Brien, awaiting a response.

  “Did you get any of that?” O’Brien asked.

  “His name is Chegaoo,” Fritjof said. “He wants us to go with him. I think he’s saying his men will unload the ship.”

  “Not a chance,” said O’Brien, switching from Frankish to Norse. Frankish was the language the Dvergar generally used when speaking to foreigners, allowing them to use Norse to speak confidentially among themselves. “Aengus?” he said to Chegaoo.

  The Indian did not respond except to point up the path again.

  “I don’t like this at all,” O’Brien said, in Norse. “Fritjof, you stay with the ship. We’ll keep half the men here, including those trained on the rifles. Don’t let any Skraelings within fifty feet of Sjávarbotn. The rest of the me will come with me.”

  “We’re not going to unload?”

  “Not until I know what the hell is going on.”

  Fritjof nodded. “What about him?” He was gesturing toward Dorian, who was still on his hands and knees, oblivious to the goings-on around him.

  “Put him back on the ship for now, with the rest of the men. I’ll send someone back with instructions when I can.”

  “Yes, sir,” Fritjof said. He selected a group of men, directing them back onto Sjávarbotn. Two of them helped Doran to his feet and back over the gunwale.

  “All right,” O’Brien. “Everyone not on Sjávarbotn is with me. Stay together and be ready for anything.”

  “You sure you don’t want me to come?” Fritjof said, from the prow of the ship. “You might need a translator.”

  “Any of you men speak Mi’kmaq?” O’Brien said to the men on the shore.

  “I know a few words,” said a tall, lean man with wispy blond hair. His name was Havardr.

  “Then you’re our new translator. Stay close to me.” He turned to Chegaoo. “Lead the way,” he said, pointing to the trail.

  The Indian glowered at him, clearly unhappy his instructions had not been followed. O’Brien wagered that the man was bluffing, hoping to get the Norsemen to acknowledge their authority—and possibly make off with some of the supplies in Sjávarbotn’s hold. If he was wrong—if Aengus had ceded control over the river to the natives—then they were likely all dead anyway.

  For nearly a minute, the two stood on the shore, staring at each other. Finally Chegaoo turned away, barking an order to his men. He started up the beach toward the path, and O’Brien, suppressing a smile, followed.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Ivar leaned on his pick, watching as the priest trudged up the gravel road toward him. The priest’s arrival was no surprise: Thorvald, watching from an overlook to the south, had warned of his approach. Security at Camp Yeager had been tightened since the cave-in, three months earlier.

  The digger had been disassembled and transported back to Svartalfheim, and the entire site had been thoroughly combed for anachronistic tools and anything else that might raise suspicion. Partly as a result of these efforts, the new mine was little more than a forty-foot-long horizontal shaft cut into a hillside. Ivar was still hoping to produce enough coal to heat Svartalfheim through the next winter, but it was going to be tight. At the rate they were digging, they would not hit a high-quality coal deposit for at least another month. The coal the mules were pulling out of the shaft behind him was so mixed with peat and granite that it wasn’t worth transporting to Höfn. There was no slack in the schedule for babysitting security concerns, and that was potentially a problem for the priest: Ivar had received clear orders from the Committee: if the priest showed up at Camp Yeager again, he was not to be allowed to leave alive.

  “We’ve no need for a Christian priest here,” Ivar shouted, while the man was some distance away. “I’ve told you before: Thor watches over this mine.” He hoped to dissuade the priest from approaching, so that he would not have to kill him. But the priest did not slow. Ivar tried again. “Go on, priest! Your crucified god has no power here!”

  “Did Thor watch over your last mine as well?” the priest asked.

  “Watch yourself, priest,” Ivar growled.

  “I mean no disrespect,” the priest said, stopping ten paces before Ivar. “I witnessed the cave-in, and I prayed that the hand of God would deliver your men from the pit. Did you pray that day to Thor?”

  “Aye, and to Freya and Odin as well,” Ivar said.

  “I saw the hand of God that day,” the priest said. “It reached into the bowels of the Earth to save your miners. Was it the hand of Thor that I saw, or that of Odin?”

  “Perhaps I’ll give you the chance to ask
your God in person,” Ivar said.

  “You would threaten to kill a man of God?”

  “I’m under orders, priest. I tried to warn you off, but you give me no choice. I’m not to let you leave here alive.”

  “Who gives you these orders? What is so important about a mine that the mere sight of it carries a death sentence?”

  “You know I’m not going to answer such questions.”

  “Since I’m to be executed anyway, surely there can be no harm in sating my curiosity?”

  “Perhaps I’m still hoping to avoid killing you.”

  “Is that a possibility? You made my demise sound unavoidable.”

  Ivar sighed. “What is your name, priest?”

  “Osric.”

  “Why do you do this, Osric? You’ve been told a dozen times to stay away from this mine.”

  “And I’ve been commanded a dozen and one times to witness to the men inside.”

  “By whom?”

  “You know where my orders come from, Ivar. I do the bidding of God in heaven and his Servant in Rome. I have made no secret of this. Now perhaps you would return the favor…?”

  Ivar did not reply, and it was Osric’s turn to sigh in frustration.

  “I suppose we may as well get this over with, then,” the priest said. “I ask only that you make it quick. A sharp axe to the neck, if you would.”

  “Why are you so interested in who gives me my orders?” Ivar asked. “You never asked such questions in the past.”

  “Since my last visit, I have spent much time in contemplation and prayer. I have often wondered why the men of this mine are so obstinate in their refusal of the gospel. Miners are ordinarily sensible men, and well aware of the fragility of their own lives, so their stubbornness frustrated me. The truth was revealed to me only a few days ago, as I watched a young boy attempting to order a flock of stray sheep off his pasture. I knew this flock, and knew them to be very docile in the hands of their owner. But the sheep did not know this boy, and therefore did not respect his commands.

  “You see,” Osric went on, “The Church ministers to all the kings of Europe. There is not a county or duchy that is beyond His divine mercy and grace, and by ministering to the lords, we ensure that the blessings of Christ flow to every tradesman and serf. But your sovereign is unknown to Rome and therefore beyond the reach of Christendom.”

  “You’ve spoken to Rome about this mine?” Ivar asked.

  Osric shook his head. “I am but an unimportant itinerant priest. My wanderings among shepherds, fisherman and miners are of little interest to Rome. But I have seen enough to know that you do not work for any king in Britain, Frankia or the Norse lands. I would speak to the shepherd, that I—or someone like me—might one day witness to the sheep.”

  “You want to proselytize to the men I work for?”

  “I would speak to them, yes.”

  “That is not going to happen.”

  “Why? What do they have to fear from a lone priest?”

  Ivar considered the question for a moment. “Tell me, priest. Do you speak Latin?”

  “Of course. Greek, English and Frankish as well.”

  “Not Norse though?”

  “I know some. I’m sure I could become fluent in little time with more exposure.”

  “And you can read and write?”

  “All priests can, yes.”

  “And you know the Bible and the other ancient texts the Franks venerate? Well enough to teach them?”

  “I do. Do your superiors need a teacher?”

  “They might. You have not spoken to anyone else about this mine? Other priests, or your superiors in Rome?”

  “I have not.”

  “You’d better be telling the truth, priest. I am trying to save your life. I am not certain I believe in your Christ, but I do not want the death of a priest on my hands.”

  “I understand.”

  “Know that if I arrange for you to be taken to see my superiors, you will not be permitted to leave. If they suffer you to live, you will be their prisoner. You will never return to Scotland, nor to Rome.”

  “If I disappear, Rome will send someone else to minister to the people of this area. I will go where I am called, even if it is to my death.”

  “It may yet be,” Ivar said.

  *****

  Osric spent the night at the camp, under strict orders from Ivar not to speak to the other men. The next morning, he was awakened by Ivar, who handed him a shovel. “We’re short-handed,” Ivar explained.

  “I thought I was going to be taken to—” Osric started.

  “Soon,” Ivar said. “For now, you shovel.”

  Osric spent the day just inside the mouth of the mine, listening to the miners hacking away with their picks and shoveling the detritus they produced into a waiting mule cart. He was not unused to hard work, but his days turning earth with a spade at the monastery in England were long behind him. By the end of the day, his hands were bloody and his back ached. He gulped down a bowl of gruel with the other men and then staggered to his cot, falling asleep with his boots on. The next morning, he was awakened by a shout from Ivar, who handed him a roll of cotton cloth. “For your hands,” Ivar said, and walked away. Osric sat up, nodding dumbly. He wrapped his hands as best he could, grabbed the shovel from where he had left it, and went back to the mine to spend another day shoveling.

  After a week of this, Osric began to suspect Ivar had tricked him into a lifetime of hard labor in the mine for the false promise of an opportunity to speak to Ivar’s superiors. Still, he did not complain. He had been given orders by the Pope himself to return to the mine and seek an introduction to the men who ran it. The Pope had even absolved him in advance of the lies he would have to tell to make this happen. Osric still felt guilty about them, but he attributed this to his own lack of faith. While he shoveled, he prayed for the faith to overcome his doubts—particularly the doubt that he would ever return to Rome.

  The miners did not speak to him, and he did not speak to them. He shoveled in silence, listening to their songs and banter, hoping to pick up some of the Norse language. In the afternoon of the tenth day after his return to the mine, he overhead two of the men talking about the arrival of a supply ship. That night the miners were joined in the mess by some two dozen additional Norsemen, the leader of whom was a man named Gustav. Osric, eating alone in a corner while the Norsemen sang and caroused, overheard Ivar talking to Gustav about him. Gustav did not seem pleased.

  The next morning, Osric was awakened by one of the newcomers, who shouted at him in Norse. Osric did not understand the man, but he gathered he was supposed to follow the him. Soon he was marching down the gravel road in the dark with the other Norsemen. Only three men walked behind Osric; he gathered that the rest of the crew was ahead of them. By the time he reached the ship, several men were already pushing it away from the shore. Those behind him broke into a run, splashing through the water to vault over the gunwale. Osric, near panic, gathered up his frock and ran to the ship, nearly stumbling in the knee-deep water. He managed to get one hand on the gunwale and hung there helplessly for several seconds before a firm hand gripped his wrist and hauled him aboard. Men exploded in laughter as he collapsed onto the deck.

  Gustav, standing in the prow, shouted an order, and the men moved to their benches and grabbed the oars from the rack overhead. Someone gripped Osric’s arm and pointed him to an empty bench. He sat down and found an oar in front of him. He put his hands on it, suppressing a gasp of pain as the salt-infused wood touched the wounds in his hands. Gustav began to sing, and the crew quickly joined in, pulling at the oars in time. The little ship—Osric thought it was what the Vikings called a knar—was at sea before the first rays of the sun were visible in the eastern sky.

  After they left the little harbor, the karve turned south to skirt the eastern coast of Scotland. The wind was against them, so they spent the day rowing. Osric, leaving bloody stains on the oar handle before him, pined for the rela
tive comfort of the coal mine. They traveled south along the coast of Scotland and then England, rarely losing sight of land. After three days of rowing, they left the Cliffs of Dover behind. Later that day, a shout from Gustav indicated that the coast of Normandy was in sight. Gustav ordered to crew to stow the oars and unfurl the sails. Thankful for the respite, Osric did his best to stay out of the way. For two days, the karve sailed along the coast. Osric, sitting near the stern, occasionally caught sight of a smaller boat, not of Norse make, following a mile or so back. He thought it was the ship that had brought him from Rome, but he could not be certain. That ship, commanded by a Castilian privateer named Sebastian, had deposited him at Edinburgh two weeks earlier. He had been too thankful for the Pope’s grace in sparing him the trek overland to ask a lot of questions of Sebastian, but now he began to wonder if the Pope had motivations other than ensuring Osric’s own comfort and safety.

  Judging from Gustav’s curses, Osric was not the only one who noticed the ship. Gustav possessed several strange tools that he seemed to use to ensure that the ship was on course. One of these was an extensible wooden tube that he occasionally held to one eye, peering ahead, in the direction they were traveling, or to the stern, in the direction of the pursuing ship. On the evening of the second day, he barked an order, which Osric could not understand except for the Norse word for priest. Two men nearby seized him and dragged him to the ship’s hold, where he remained for the night and the following day. The hold was empty except for the crew’s rations, so he had more than enough room, but it was musty and dark and smelled of mildew and rotten wood. He didn’t dare break into the food stores for fear of being thought a thief, but after several hours he allowed himself to drink from a barrel of beer that had been tapped the previous day. The voyage was more pleasant after that.

  The next day, one of the men climbed into the hold, ordering Osric onto his knees. Osric complied, and the man put a burlap sack over his head, securing it with a cord at Osric’s neck. The man climbed back onto the deck and slammed the hatch, leaving Osric alone again. After a few hours, Osric began to think he was being punished for dipping into the beer, but sounds on the deck above told him the ship was coming into port. The sails were furled and the ship was rowed until its hull thunked up against a wooden dock. After some additional commotion and conversation in Frankish that Osric couldn’t make out, he was hauled onto the deck. He was helped over the gunwale onto the dock and then marched up the dock and over sandy ground for a hundred paces or so. He judged from the smells and sounds that he was near a horse stable. Someone helped him into a wagon and then gave him a shove. He fell onto his hands and knees. His ankles were tied together, and then his hands were pulled behind his back and his wrists were tied as well, so tightly that his fingers tingled. There was the sound of crates being loaded onto the wagon and then slid into place, sometimes so close to him that the corners dug into his arms or legs. He had the sense of being just another piece of cargo, of a particularly frustrating shape and size, that would have to be prodded and mangled until it conformed to the space not used by the more valuable items.