by Ben Marcus
“You can bet I’m going. A hydra flew in last night and ran off Rolf Hierdal’s sheep. We can’t be putting up with this shit. It comes down to pride, is what it comes down to.”
“Shit, Gnut, when’d you get to be such a gung ho motherfucker? I don’t recall you being so proud and thin-skinned before Astrud went off to her good place. Anyway, Lindisfarne is probably sacked out already. If you don’t remember, we just about pillaged the living shit out of those people on the last swing through, and I doubt they’ve come up with much in the meantime to justify a trip.”
I wished Gnut would go ahead and own up to the fact that his life out here was making him lonely and miserable instead of laying on with this warrior-man routine. I could tell just to look at him that most days he was thinking of walking into the water and not bothering to turn back. He wanted back on the boat among company.
Not that I was all that averse myself, speaking in the abstract, but I was needing more sweet time with Pila. I loved that girl even more than she probably knew, and I wanted to get in some thorough lovemaking before the Haymaking Month was under way and see if I couldn’t make us a little monkey.
But the days wore on and the weather worsened. Pila watched it sharply, and a sort of hysterical sadness welled up in her, as it often did when I’d be leaving. She cussed me on some days, and others she’d hold me to her and weep. And late one evening, far toward dawn, the hail started. It came suddenly, with the hard, terrifying scraping sound a ship makes when its hull hits stone. We hunkered down in the sheepskins, and I whispered soothing things to Pila, trying to drown out the clatter.
The sun was not yet full up in the sky when Djarf came and knocked. I rose and stepped across the floor, damp with cool morning dew. Djarf stood in the doorway wearing a mail jacket and shield and breathing like he’d jogged the whole way over. He chucked a handful of hail at my feet. He had a wild grin on his face. “Today’s the day,” he said. “We got to get it on.”
Sure, I could have told him thanks anyway, but once you back down from one job, you’re lucky if they’ll even let you put in for a flat-fee trade escort. I had to think long term, me and Pila, and any little jits we might produce. Still, she didn’t like to hear it. When I got back in bed, she tucked the covers over her face, hoping I’d think she was angry instead of crying.
The clouds were spilling out low across the sky when we shoved off. Thirty of us on board, Gnut rowing with me at the bow and behind us a lot of other men I’d been in some shit with before. Some, like Ørl Stender, were men with families and cried when the boat left the shore. Ørl fucked up the cadence waving to his son, who stood on the beach waving back. He was a tiny one, not four or five, standing there with no pants on, holding a baby pig on a hide leash, sweetly ignorant of the business his father was heading off into.
Most of the others on board were young men, brash and violent children, so innocent about the world, they would just as soon stick a knife in you as shake your hand.
Gnut was overjoyed. He laughed and sang and put a lot of muscle into the oar, me just holding my hands on it to keep up appearances. I was limp with grief and missing Pila already. The hills humping up behind the beach were a shrill green hue, vivid and outrageous, an angry answer to all of that gray water that lay before them. I watched the beach for Pila and her bright white hair. She hadn’t come down to see me off, too mad and sad about me leaving to get up out of bed. But I looked for her anyway, the land scooting away from me with every jerk of the oars.
If Gnut knew I was hurting, he didn’t say so. He nudged me and joked, and maintained a steady patter of inanities, as though this whole thing was a private vacation the two of us had cooked up together. “If you had to live on the ship, but you got to have a magic basket full of your favorite food, but only one favorite food, what would it be? I’d have black pudding. Black pudding and plums. So all right, you get two foods.” Or: “If someone put a curse on you, and you had to have horns like a goat, and shit little shits like a goat, would you rather have that, or a seven-foot dick that you had to have hanging out of your pants at all times?” And so on.
Djarf stood at his spot in the bow, all full of vinegar and righteous enthusiasm at being back on the sea. Slesvigers, as you know, will bust into song with no provocation whatsoever, their affinity for music roughly on a par with the wretchedness of their singing. Djarf screamed out the cadence in a sickening, wobbly melody that buzzed into the ears and stung you on the brain. His gang of young hockchoppers acted like it was the best thing they’d ever heard, and they piped up too, howling like spaniels whose nuts hadn’t dropped yet.
Three days out, the sun punched through the dirty clouds and put a steely shimmer on the sea. It cooked the brine out of our clothes and got everybody dry and happy. I couldn’t help but think that if Naddod were really as serious as we were all sure he was, this crossing would have been a fine opportunity to call up a typhoon and hold a massacre. But the weather held, and the seas stayed drowsy and low.
We had less light in the evenings out here than at home, and it was a little easier sleeping in the open boat without a midnight sun. Gnut and I slept where we rowed, working around each other to get comfy on the bench. I woke up once in the middle of the night and found Gnut dead asleep, muttering and slobbering and holding me in a rough embrace. I tried to peel him off, but he was a big man, and his hard arms stayed on me sure as if they’d grown there. I poked him and jabbered at him, but the dude would not be roused, so I just tried to work up a little slack to where he wasn’t hurting my ribs, and I drifted back to sleep.
Later, I told him what had happened. “That’s a lot of horseshit,” he said, his broad, loose cheeks going red.
“I wish it were,” I said. “But I’ve got bruises I could show you. Hey, if I ever come around asking to be your sweetheart, do me a favor and remind me about this.”
He was all upset. “Fuck you, Harald. You’re not funny. Nobody thinks you’re funny.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Guess you haven’t had a whole lot of practice lately having a body beside you at night.”
He got quiet and rested on the oar a second. “That’s right,” he said, turning his face away. “I haven’t.”
Thanks to an easy wind blowing from the east, we crossed fast and sighted the island six days early. One of the hockchoppers spotted it first, and when he did, he let everyone know it by cutting loose with a battle howl he’d probably been practicing in his father’s pigyard. He drew his sword and swung it in figure eights above his head, causing the men around him to scatter under the gunwales. This boy was a nasty item, a face like a shoat hog and a vibrant beard of acne ravaging his cheeks. I’d seen him around at home. He had three blackened, chopped-off fingers reefed to his belt.
Haakon Gokstad looked up from his seat in the stern and shot the boy a baleful look. Haakon had been on more raids and runs than the bunch of us put together. He was old and creaky and worked the rudder, partly because he could read the tides by how the blood moved through his hands, and also (though you’d never say it when he could hear) because those old arms were poor for pulling oars. “Put your ass on that bench, young man,” Haakon said to the boy. “We got twelve hours’ work between here and there.”
The boy colored. He let his sword arm hang. He looked at his friends to see if he’d been humiliated in front of them, and if he had, what he needed to do about it. The whole boat was looking over at him. Even Djarf paused in his song. The other kid on his bench whispered something and scooted over. The boy quickly sat and grabbed the oar, head bowed. The rowing and the chatter started up again.
You could say that those people on Lindisfarne were fools, living out there on a tiny island without high cliffs or decent natural defenses, and so close to us and also the Swedes and the Norwegians—how we saw it, we couldn’t afford not to come by and sack every now and again. But when we came into the bright little bay, a quiet fell over all of us. Even the hockchoppers quit grabassing and looked. The plac
e was wild with fields of purple thistle, and when the wind blew, it twitched and rolled, like the hide of some fantastic critter shrugging in its sleep. Red wildflowers spurted on the hills in gorgeous, indecent gouts. Apple trees lined the shore, and there was something sorrowful in how they hung so low with fruit. We could see a man making his way toward a clump of white-walled cottages, his donkey loping along behind him with a load. On the far hill, I could make out the silhouette of the monastery. They hadn’t got the roof back on from when we’d burned it last, and with orphaned roof joists jutting up, it looked like a giant bird’s nest whose occupant had left for distant shores. It was such a lovely place, and I hoped there would still be something left to enjoy after we got off the ship and wrecked everything up.
We gathered on the beach, and already Djarf was in a lather. He did a few deep knee bends. He got down on the beach in front of all of us and ran through some poses, cracking his bones and drawing out the knots in his muscles. Then he closed his eyes and said a silent prayer. His eyes were still closed when a man in a long robe appeared, picking his way down through the thistle.
Haakon Gokstad had a finger stuck in his mouth where one of his teeth had fallen out. He removed the finger and spit through the hole. He nodded up the hill at the figure heading our way. “My, that sumbitch has got some brass,” he said. Then he put the finger back.
The man walked straight to Djarf. He stood before him and removed his hood. His hair lay thin on his scalp and had probably been blond before it went white. He was old, with lines on his face that could have been drawn with a dagger point.
“Naddod,” Djarf said, dipping his head slightly. “S’pose you’ve been expecting us.”
“I certainly have not,” Naddod said. He brought his hand up to the rude wooden cross that hung from his neck. “And I won’t sport with you and pretend the surprise is entirely a pleasant one. Frankly, there isn’t much left here worth pirating, so, yes, it’s a bit of a puzzle.”
“Uh-huh,” said Djarf. “Can’t tell us anything about a hailstorm, or locusts and shit, or a bunch of damn dragons coming around and scaring the piss out of everybody’s wife. You don’t know nothing about any of that.”
Naddod held his palms up and smiled piteously. “No, I’m very sorry, I don’t. We did send a monkeypox down to the Spanish garrison at Much Wenlock, but honestly, nothing your way.”
Djarf’s tone changed, and his voice got loud and amiable. “Huh. Well, that’s something.” He turned to us and held up his hands. “Hey, boys, hate to break it to you, but it sounds like somebody fucked something up here. Old Naddod says it wasn’t him, and as soon as he tells me just who in the motherfuck it was behind the inconveniences we been having, we’ll get back under way.”
“Right.” Naddod was uneasy, and I could see a chill run through him. “If you’re passing through Mercia, I know they’ve just gotten hold of this man Ethelred. Supposed to be a very tough customer. You know, that was his leprosy outbreak last year in—”
Djarf was grinning and nodding, but Naddod looked stricken.
Djarf kept a small knife in his belt, and in the way other men smoked a pipe or chewed seeds, Djarf stropped that little knife. It was sharpened down to a little fingernail of blade. You could shave a fairy’s ass with that thing.
And while Naddod was talking, Djarf had pulled out his little knife and unzipped the man. At the sight of blood washing over the white seashells, everybody pressed forward, hollering and whipping their swords around. Djarf was overcome with a sort of crazed elation, and he hopped up and down, yelling for everybody to be quiet and watch him.
Naddod was not dead. His insides had pretty much spilled out, but he was still breathing. Not crying out or anything, though, which you had to give him credit for. Djarf hunkered and flipped Naddod onto his stomach and rested a foot in the small of his back.
Gnut was right beside me. He sighed and put his hand over his eyes. “Ah, shit, is he doing a blood eagle?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Looks that way.”
Haakon spit again. “He don’t need to mess with that. Damn tedious waste of time.”
Djarf held up his hand to quiet the crowd. “Now I know most of the old-timers have seen one of these before, but it might be a new one on some of you young men.” The hockchoppers elbowed each other, giddy with anticipation. “This thing is what we call a ‘blood eagle,’ and if you’ll just sit tight a second you can see—well, it’s a pretty wild effect.”
The men stepped back to give Djarf room to work. Djarf placed the point of his sword to one side of Naddod’s spine. He leaned into it, and worked the sword in gingerly, as though he were doing elaborate embroidery on a piece of rare silk. He went at it slowly, delicately crunching through one rib at a time until he’d made an incision about a foot long. He paused to wipe sweat from his brow, and made a parallel cut on the other side of the backbone. Then he knelt and put his hands into the cuts. He fumbled around in there a second, and then drew Naddod’s lungs through the slits. As Naddod huffed and gasped, the lungs flapped, looking sort of like a pair of wings. I had to turn away myself. It was very grisly stuff.
The young men roared, and Djarf stood there, flushed with pride, conducting the applause. Then, at his command, they all broke out their sieging tackle and swarmed up the hill.
Only Gnut and Haakon and Ørl Stender and I didn’t go. Ørl watched the others flock up toward the monastery, and when he was sure no one was looking back, he went to where Naddod lay dying, and struck him hard on the skull with the back of a hatchet. We were all relieved to see those lungs stop quivering. Ørl sighed and crossed himself. He said a funerary prayer, the gist of which was that he didn’t know what this man’s god was all about, but he was sorry that this humble servant had gotten sent up early, and on a bullshit pretext too. He said he didn’t know the man but that he seemed nice enough, and he probably deserved something better the next time around.
“Hell of a rigged-up-ass excuse for a raid,” Haakon grumbled.
Gnut smiled and squinted up at the sky. “Have you ever seen a day like this? This is a heck of a fine day. Let’s go up the hill and see if we can’t scratch up something for a picnic.”
It was all the same to him, a month away from home for neither moral purpose nor riches. He did not have a wife waiting on him who was pissed already and would require extravagant palliating with Northumbrian booty.
We hiked up to the little settlement on the top of the hill. Some ways over, where the monastery was, the young men were on a spree, shouting and setting the trees on fire, dragging out the monks and pulling blood eagles.
Our hands were sore from the row over, and we paused at a well in the center of the village to wet our palms and have a drink. We were surprised to see the young hockchopper from the boat bust forth from a stand of ash trees, yanking some poor half-dead citizen along behind him. He walked over to where we were standing and let his victim collapse on the dusty boulevard.
“This is a hell of a sight,” he said to us. “You’d make good chieftains, standing around like this, watching other people work.”
“Why, you little turd,” Haakon said. He took his hand off his hip and backhanded the boy across the mouth. The fellow lying there in the dust looked up and chuckled. The boy squealed with rage, plucked a dagger from his hip scabbard, and stabbed Haakon in the stomach. There was a still moment. Haakon gazed down at the ruby stain spreading across his tunic. He looked greatly irritated.
A sweet, angelic expression of overmastering anxiety crept across the young man’s face as he realized what he’d done. He was still looking that way when Haakon cleaved his head across the eyebrows with a single, graceful stroke.
Haakon cleaned his sword and looked again at his stomach. “Sumbitch,” he said, probing the wound with his pinky. “It’s deep. I believe I’m in a fix.”
“Nonsense,” said Gnut. “Just need to lay you down and stitch you up.”
Ørl, who was softhearted, went over to the man th
e youngster had left. He propped him up against the well and gave him the bucket to sip at.
Across the road, an old dried-up farmer had come out of his house. He stared off at the smoke from the monastery rolling down across the bay. He nodded at us. We walked his way.
“Hullo,” he said. He looked hard at my face. “Hm. I might recognize you.”
“Could be,” I said. “I was through here last fall.”
“Uh-huh,” he said. “Now that was a hot one. Don’t know why you’d want to come back. You got everything that was worth a shit on the last going-over.”
“Yeah, well, we’re having a hard time figuring it ourselves. Just supposed to be an ad hominem deal on your man Naddod. Wrong guy, as it turns out, but he got gotten anyway, sorry to say.”
The man sighed. “Doesn’t harelip me any. We all had to tithe in to cover his retainer. Do just as well without him, I expect. So what are you doing, any looting?”
“Why?” I said. “You got anything to loot?”
“Me? Oh, no. Got a decent cookstove, but I can’t see you toting that back on the ship.”
“Don’t suppose you’ve got a coin hoard or anything buried out back?”
“Ah, a coin hoard. Jeezum crow, I wish I did have a coin hoard. Coin hoard, I’d really turn things around for myself.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t suppose you’d own up if you did have.”
He laughed. “You got that right, my friend. But I guess you got to kill me or believe me, and either way, no hoard.” He pointed at Haakon, who was leaning on Gnut and looking pretty spent. “Looks like your friend’s got a problem. Unless you’d like to watch him die, why don’t you bring him inside? Got a daughter who’s hell’s own seamstress.”
The man, who was called Bruce, had a cozy little place. We all filed in. His daughter was standing by the stove, and she gave a nervous “pip” when we came through the door. She was a small thing and looked neither young nor old. She had a head full of thick black hair, and a thin face, pale as sugar. She was a pretty girl. So pretty, in fact, that it took a second to notice she was missing an arm. We all balked and had a look at her. Haakon took his hand off his stomach and gave a boyish wave. Ørl farted anxiously. But Gnut, you could tell, was truly smitten. The way he looked, blanched and wide-eyed, he could have been facing a wild dog instead of a good-looking woman. He rucked his hands through his ropy hair and tried to lick the crust off his lips. Then he nodded to her and uttered a solemn “hullo.”
