The Great Pagan Army

by Vaughn Heppner

The youth squinted down the length of the springald.

  Odo grew tense. The clouds scudded fast. The wind ruffled his cloak. He pressed his fingers into the huntsman’s shoulder and peered over the parapet.

  “Ah,” whispered the youth. “We’re in luck, milord.”

  The Siege Master stumped seven steps nearer. He yelled at a slave who carted a bucket of pitch too close to a fire.

  Odo took his hand off the huntsman, although he kept his gaze riveted onto the Siege Master. The youth mumbled a prayer to Saint Germain. There was a click, snap, and a heavy ka-chunk. The javelin whooshed. It arced. Odo groaned. It was going miss. Then the javelin dropped. Was that the hand of Saint Germain or was it the wind? The huntsman laughed with glee. Odo still doubted. Then the javelin passed through the strange Northman. The Siege Master, who had traveled from the land of Rus, stood a moment longer. Then he crumpled as blood gushed from the horrible wound.

  Franks clapped the grinning huntsman on the back. Odo nodded, his thin lips stretched into an ugly smile. He wondered if his heart was becoming as black as a Northman’s, but maybe that’s what he needed to beat these fierce warriors of the Sea King.

  41.

  The boredom of the siege gnawed at Heming. Most days was listening to snowflakes fall or squelching through the mud of camp. It was cloud staring. It was hearing the same joke from five different warriors and the sixth telling it wrong and everyone laughing hardest then. It was Bjorn droning on about Odin or some olden king of the past. It was too much sauerkraut. The smell of it almost made Heming vomit. The veterans of the Great Army had learned that in winter a warrior fat on sauerkraut stayed healthiest. It was a whetstone and sitting on an upturned beer keg and scraping his she-troll until razor sharp. Heming showed off by shaving his cheeks and chin with her.

  They raided thrice into the hinterland for supplies. The last time was funny because one of Valgard’s raiders from the Danelagh in England gained an odd surname. It was in a village. Heming staggered drunkenly along with his berserker brothers, bursting into huts and snatching the babies crying in their cribs. Outside they took turns tossing the babies into the air and spearing them before they thudded onto the cold ground. Grimar shoved a spear into a Viking’s hands, a Viking who watched with a disapproving frown. The man from the Danelagh threw down the spear and lurched away. Pale-faced, he turned around and called them trolls and storm giants, monsters. Heming had hooted and laughed as hard as his brothers. Grimar had thought up the surname. “He is the baby’s man.” Thereafter, they called the Danelagh Viking that every time they ran across him in camp.

  Heming axe-trained everyday until sweat dripped from his limbs and steam rose from his back. He wrestled and ran foot races. He hurled spears and twirled knives into wooden targets. At night, he swilled ale, beer, wine or mead. If he didn’t he dreamed. Those were horrible. The ghosts and spirits of those he had slain rose up in his dreams and said awful things. He spoke once to Bjorn about it. The massive champion of Odin nodded slowly, and Heming wondered for days afterwards if he had seen a twitching grin at the corner of Bjorn’s lips or if that had just been his imagination. Next, he told Grimar about the dreams.

  “Ignore them,” Grimar said.

  “I can’t.”

  “Then drink. Drown them. Damn all dreams! They don’t mean a thing.”

  Despite the ale, wine and pork, sauerkraut and roast oxen, Heming became gaunt. Over the months, what little fat he had melted away, revealing ropy, twisted muscles. Too often, his eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot. He combed his hair less. The strands were usually sweaty and tangled and fell into his eyes. Behind his back warriors whispered that a spirit of doom hung on Ivarsson like a cloak. The Finnish wizard saw the clearest. The wisp-bearded, spell-chanter said that Odin’s ravens, Hugin and Munin, perched on Heming shoulders, softly cawing into his ears.

  Heming brooded on luck, but that had always been his way. Then the Norns, if they truly spun his fate, added a new strand. Maybe pity moved the three spinsters. Maybe they didn’t like Bjorn’s motives or the Hunnish curse that wove its sinister web around Heming. Whatever the reasons, whether it was the gods, stars or hidden demons, Heming’s last chance began with a poor, frightened Frankish girl.

  Heming found her in camp. She was a thin, miserable wench with huge breasts and the first glimmering swell of a ‘baby belly.’ She boiled cabbage and scoured cauldrons. She stank of sauerkraut, and like him had ratted hair and dirty, splotched skin.

  Heming liked big breasts. Most Danes did, and many warriors had used her. Heming cunningly joked about her and through it found out that at first she had scratched and clawed her rapists. Many had praised her courage and the excitement she gave, and many others thereby vied to mount her. Soon her spirit wilted until at last she was a listless lay. It made as much sense as to mount the dead. Heming had heard of a few warriors like that. The Great Army held vicious fighters but strange, sometimes altered men. Heming wondered sometimes if he was changing, becoming, well, strange, vicious… altered. Grimar had once said that warriors who fought for land had long ago left the Great Army. For seven years or more, the warriors of the Great Host had butchered and stolen other people’s loot. Those who grew sick of it left, leaving only the hardest, toughest kernel of killers.

  Heming chanced to notice the blank-eyed girl one day as she filled a warrior’s cup. She must not have been paying attention, for she poured too much and spilled beer onto the warrior’s hand. He flung down his cup and cuffed her, sending her sprawling into the mud.

  “Clumsy bitch!” he shouted. The warrior rose, kicked her savagely in the belly and strode off.

  Heming sat nearby as he sharpened his she-troll. He stared at the flames, hypnotized. Within the fire somebody laughed. He couldn’t tell whether it was his father, Odin or Attila the Hun. It troubled him so he tore away his gaze. He had noticed the incident out of the corner of his eye, but had paid no real heed. Now, in surprise, he watched the girl.

  From where she lay in the mud, she bit her lip until blood trickled from underneath her pearly white teeth. Her bony fists shook as she gazed daggers at the warrior’s back. Then she caught Heming staring. She looked down. Her rigid body slackened. It grew limp.

  Heming kept watching. This was different, something to break the monotony. She dared peek up. It stirred something in him. He stood. Then he spun and strode away.

  Two days later, he heard about her as several warriors related a story to one another. Heming whirled his whetstone against the iron of his she-troll as he sat nearby. The cook girl had shrieked at night, and stillborn had slid out of her a little monster, a twisted piece of flesh with misshapen limbs and baby-fingers. She had wept piteously, a wail that had sent warriors roaring for someone to shut her up. An old sea rover that acted as cook had clouted her on the head with a splintered plank. Then the old rover had picked up the little bloody thing and pitched it to some hounds. That had awakened her, and she’d flown screaming at the hounds, snatching her birthing out of the dog’s teeth. Then she had crawled away and buried her little monster.

  The next day Heming happened to be at the cauldrons again. He sharpened a dagger. With a stick, the girl stirred boiling cabbage, her eyes blank and far staring, and her face ashen and filthy.

  The old, sea rover cook shuffled by and peered into her cauldron. He paled and his old wrinkled face turned red. “You’re cooking shit!” he roared. “Dung is floating in there.”

  Her head swiveled around. A tired, wicked smile lit her face.

  The cook bellowed an oath and raised his hand to strike her.

  Heming caught the wrist. “Leave her,” he said.

  The old sea rover spun round, spitting rage.

  Heming shoved him against the kettle. The old sea rover screamed as hot cauldron iron touched his back and as he stumbled through the fire.

  The girl said no word, although her wicked smile vanished.

  “You will cook for me,” Heming said. When still she didn’t speak, Hem
ing wrapped his fingers around her stick-like arm and led her away. He took her to where Bjorn and Grimar rattled dice into a helmet.

  “She is mine,” Heming said.

  Bjorn shrugged.

  Grimar made a joke about his finally becoming a man.

  Heming learned that she was a Frank, captured when the ships had sailed down from Rouen, from the breakout after the fortified bridge at Pitres. She knew a smattering of Norse. Her name was Willelda. Her father had been a village elder. She would die soon, of this she assured him. He asked whose child she had borne. Her lips became bloodless and tears leaked from her eyes.

  “You had a husband?” he asked.

  The minutest headshake gave him the answer.

  “It was a bastard,” he said.

  She sneered.

  He ignored that. Better sneers than the blank look of suicide. He laid his head on his folded shirt and pulled the bear cloak over them. She slept with him in a shed where the berserks snored. (Bjorn had paid the Jarl wergild whose cook Heming had burned, and Bjorn had paid her slave price.) She slept with Heming, but he hadn’t mounted her. It was odd. With her near, he didn’t drink and he didn’t think the bad dreams would come.

  Bjorn didn’t like her. This became clear two days later on the west side of camp and on a large, split-log platform. Heming and Bjorn trampled across the creaking boards. They ducked, wove and swung. Their axe-staves clacked, batted and landed solid thumps. Bjorn struck viciously. Heming staggered backward and tripped off the platform, landing his butt into the cold mud. Bjorn jumped down, yanked him onto his feet and handed him a towel. As Heming wiped his face, the champion pulled him by the arm.

  They wandered near the river. Snow lay on the ground. At the bank, a hound jumped into the cold water, clamped its teeth onto a stick and swam back to the Viking who had thrown it.

  Bjorn eyed the dog. “I’m troubled by the girl.”

  The words chilled Heming. “Others take women.”

  “Of course,” Bjorn said. “A berserk is like a beast. We sniff and chase when the urge is upon us, but if you only mount one woman, you let her steal a little bit of your soul. This girl makes you soft.”

  Heming snorted.

  “Use her,” Bjorn said. “Enjoy her for a week, maybe two. Then throttle her.” The strange face with its massive jaw became solemn. The small eyes were hard, searching, unsettling. “You are almost ulfhednar, but there is yet in you lingering shreds of your old life. You must purge them. You must make yourself invincible and become a god of war.”

  “What if I want a little peace instead?”

  Bjorn spoke no words, but the brooding presence of Odin seemed to pour down from the overcast sky and enter him. “You have been chosen, Heming. Battle, fury and victory, those should be your goals. Do not grow soft or it will be your death. Two weeks, then you must throttle her.”

  Heming didn’t tell Willelda about that, but that night he mounted her. He wept afterward. He didn’t know why. In the morning, he knew. The nightmares had returned.

  42.

  A brutal winter storm billowed out of the north. Like rampaging stallions, dark clouds galloped across the sky. Winds howled. Sleet swept against the parapets of Paris and upon the hovels of the Viking host. The clouds marshaled in ranks: heavy, black and piling one upon the other until darkness and freezing murk fell upon defender and besieger alike. The Danes said that Storm Giants walked aboard. Thunder shook the Viking sheds, the outworks and the long houses. Then snarling bolts of lightning flashed underneath the clouds. Thor battled the Giants. The flashes seared upon watching eyeballs. Incandescent and blinding, it sent warriors staggering for shelter. Thunder cracked like doom. Bolverk the Giant Smith smote his anvil so the land of the Franks shook and quavered. The fury of the storm howled its winter wrath. Hail pounded like fists.

  Equal to the violence of the blizzard was the rage of Sigfred the Sea King. (The dwarfish Siege Master had been his younger brother.) Sigfred pounded his fists on the table-boards. He shouted at the jarls huddled around him. His black beard bristled. His blue eyes flashed with fury, with royal rage. In his deep voice—a boom normally heard over the din of battle—he lashed his allied sea kings and the jarls and chieftains who followed his Raven Banner. Spittle flecked his lips and a vein throbbed upon his bull neck.

  “Why hasn’t Paris fallen? It is a gnat, a flea to crush between our fingers. These are Franks. They always flee and fall before us. Can walls of stone deflect our valor? Does a simple moat prove to be our undoing? By Odin’s glaring eye, no! By Thor’s red balls, no! We must smash this cursed tower. We must topple it into the Seine. We are the warriors of the Great Army. But we act like frightened priests, like cowards!”

  Sigfred pounded the boards. “The Storm Giants howl. They hurl ice on our heads. Tomorrow, by Odin, we will rage inside Paris and let our swords feast on the corpses of the slain. We will break these Franks so this land wails in lamentation. We will prevail, for we are the unconquerable sons of Odin!”

  It was two days later before the warbands tramped through freezing mud. Winds blew but they no longer shrieked. Sigfred’s cloak billowed as he roared orders. Men strained as his voice whipped their zeal. The two completed battering rams groaned and the great wheels turned. Vikings gripped coarse ropes and like dwarves in a mine, they chanted and dragged the heavy sheds over slushy ground. Herders drove cattle and goats before them. With whips and white-hot brands, Vikings herded Frankish slaves and made them stumbled and stagger. At the trench, executioners slit animal and human throats alike. Steam rose from the gashes as hot blood jetted into the frigid air. They unceremoniously dumped the bodies of oxen, calves, goats and slaves into the watery trench. Upon the cooling corpses thudded wood and hay bundles, anything to fill the gap. Soon arrows and onager stones rained upon the bitter tower, the lone fortification. Frankish javelins and springald spears flew back.

  “Now!” roared Sigfred. “Roll the rams over the trench! Now we’ll bring that tower down.”

  From upon those hated parapets, Count Odo waved his sword. All the besiegers recognized him. Frank archers drew fire-arrows, pitch-smeared missiles. The arrows trailed greasy smoke. Then the springalds fired pots with glowing wicks. At impact, the pots shattered and spat sticky flames. Those flames burned hotter than a branding iron and stuck to skin, hair and wood. Vikings screamed. A ram burst into fire. Warriors rolled in the snow bellowing or they ran in demented circles. Frankish arrows hissed and took many of those. The great attack slackened. Sigfred lifted his spear. The kettledrums boomed. Thor-bellowing Vikings charged past the onagers and over the trench. They held shields and ladders. More Frankish hell-missiles whooshed, spattering upon shields and turning them into tar-stained torches. The flaming droplets stuck onto byrnies, helmets and faces. The pork-like stink of seared flesh was nauseating. Warriors beat at each other, trying to put out the flames. It made them easy marks for arrows and showers of javelins. It finally became too much. The fierce warriors of the Great Army broke and ran.

  That night the Sea King’s rage turned into a sullen, brooding anger. At a meeting of jarls, before a mighty bonfire, he slammed a chest onto a trestle table. He flipped open the lid so firelight glimmered over a mass of silver coins. “I will give this treasure to whoever brings down that accursed pile of Frankish stones,” said the Sea King.

  There were no takers. Mad Hastein had grown tired of the siege and left a month ago. He had he said would return when warriors started hewing flesh, but not before. In the fires of the long house, jarls now glanced at one another.

  “What?” Sigfred said. “Does no one yearn for treasure?”

  Bjorn arose from among the berserks. Fanatical fires danced in his small eyes. At a nod from him, Grimar and Heming dragged forth a bound Frank knight. Bjorn drew a curved knife, and before the silent gathering, before the knight realized his fate, Bjorn slashed the Frank’s throat. With his hand in the knight’s hair Grimar jerked back the head. Bjorn neatly brought out the golden cup o
f Attila. He held it under the slashed throat and filled the terrible chalice to the rim.

  “Here is enemy blood,” rumbled Bjorn, holding aloft the skull cup as gore dripped from his hand.

  The Sea King sat on a stool. He held a spear like a scepter and his huge black beard gave him a regal bearing.

  “Evil,” warned the Finnish wizard, his wispy beard aquiver.

  “Bah!” Bjorn said. “I spit on all your Finnish spells. They are womanly, useless. Has the tower fallen to them? Nay, it has not. Your spells shrink before valor. They shrivel and die like a poisoned mouse. What I offer is the way of the warrior, the blood path.”

  Sigfred shifted moodily upon his stool.

  Valgard Skull-splitter spoke up. “We’ve tried to storm Paris and lost too many good warriors doing it. We’re here to loot, not die in a siege. It’s one thing if a city crumples like in the past, or if the knights surrender from a mere show of blades and a growl from us. The Franks often pale and grow faint. A few of them before had balls enough to march out and stand their ground. Our swine array always swept them aside. Do you remember the Bishop of Metz years ago? He led out a mighty band. We crushed them. Do you remember Rheims? They had a hero by the name of Archbishop Hincmar, but when he heard we were camped outside his walls, he fled through the snow. I heard he died weeping. So has most everyone else in Frankland perished. This city, though...” The red-bearded raider shook his head. “There’s a curse here. What good comes from storming such a place, eh? I say we move on.”

  A few jarls grunted agreement. Others glanced around. Someone in back cheered.

  Sigfred’s broad face tightened. It pulled an ugly scar on his cheek, made it whiten. He thumped the butt of his spear on the packed dirt. Before he could speak, however—

  Bjorn said loudly, “This is the cup of Attila. Do you understand what that means? The ancient warlord washed the world in fire and blood. He mastered nations. He devoured peoples. Do you think he ran from his foes?”