Taking an oar myself, we pushed for our lives, moving the Viper slowly away from the wall. The darts began to fall wide, hissing into the water off to our left. With our fires put out, their gunners had lost us in the dark. The whole bloody shambles probably hadn’t lasted three minutes.
Stunned and spent, we drifted out of range.
“Everyone call out his name,” I ordered, “and say if he’s hurt.”
Voices answered in the dark:
“Stig—nothing much, burnt my fingers.”
“Kraki—not hurt.”
“Bengt—not hurt, thanks to God and Blessed Olaf.”
“Halfdan—I think my leg’s broke.”
I counted twenty-one.
“Stuf?” came Otkel’s voice in a whisper. “Stuf?” He groped along the deck, throwing himself on one smoking corpse after another, until he touched one that slumped over its oar—“Ahhh, Stuf!”
We Icelanders stood around him as he cradled his dead friend in his arms. Looking closely, I could see where the dart had pierced the back of Stuf’s skull, gone clear through the helmet, driving the metal into his head, and come halfway out through his mouth.
“Say a Paternoster for him, Otkel, if you can,” Starkad said gently, “and then quickest out of sight is best.”
The boy wrenched out some words while we lifted Stuf up and slipped him over the side. He was the first of my Icelanders to die.
We felt in the dark for other bodies.
“Here’s something,” called Brodd from the fo’c’sle, dragging a figure to its feet. “One of Red Kol’s.” Twisting his arms behind him, he thrust his face at me. I beat it with my fists until I had exhausted my rage enough to speak. And then I pricked him in the throat with the point of my knife.
“You cowardly bastard, what was that place?”
“Call’ Jom’bor’,” mumbled the face through bleeding lips.
“Called what?” I pressed harder with my knife.
“Jomsbor’—Jomsborg.”
“Not Jumne?”
“Please—not my idea,” the fellow began to sniffle, “Ottar’s idea—he passed us the word.”
“And those—what did they call themselves, Jomsvikings?—they’re friends of yours?”
Not friends exactly. His story came out in quavering fragments of speech. The warriors who held that harbor were greedy, grim, and pitiless men. Still, they were Danes, and maybe inclined to reward some countrymen for delivering into their hands a well-made ship and its crew. At worst, it was nearer home than the slave pens of Jumne.
“And you—why didn’t you jump with the others?”
“Can’t swim,” the bruised lips mumbled.
And, finally, did this scum, this maggot, know where Jumne really was? And would he show us the way in hopes that I might forget to cut his throat?
He would.
25
The Last Viking
We found Jumne later that same night on an island hidden in a maze of channels and lagoons at the mouth of the River Oder. I kept my promise strictly to the maggot—about not cutting his throat, I mean. When we were sure of our bearings, I let Otkel tie his hands and push him overboard.
As we brought the Sea Viper in toward the sheltered roadstead, a sea of lights spread out before us—the cook fires of merchants encamped along the beach next to their ships. Around their fires they sat, jabbering in Frisian and Saxon, Wendish, Arabic, Greek, and still stranger tongues (although I couldn’t have told you then what any of them were). Here we too would camp, but first our rumbling bellies needed filling.
We beached the Viper, removed her figurehead out of respect for the spirits of the place, hung out our shields on the gunwales, and plunged greedily into the confusion of taverns and cook shops that sprawled helter-skelter along the waterfront. But as it happened, no place was roomy enough for us all, and so some stopped here and some there until finally there remained only Stig, Glum, Brodd, and myself, together with Kraki and Bengt of the Nidaros boys.
Beyond the beach, the lights of the town shone everywhere from doors and windows thrown open to the heavy night air. The place was huge—many times bigger than Nidaros—and it stayed up later at night. Putting aside hunger for a while, I led our party up one lane and down another, deeper into the town, just to take in the size of it, until before long we had left the hubbub of the waterfront far behind.
“Listen!” said Stig. There was a murmur of shouting from somewhere far in the distance. “There’s no end to the place,” said Brodd. “If you told ’em at home, they’d call you a liar.”
“Icelanders?” sneered Bengt. Lank-haired and dumpling-faced, at fifteen he was the youngest of our crew. “Why, I guess Icelanders would call you a liar if you was to tell ’em dogs have fleas! Eh, Captain? Ha, ha!”
Norwegians love to pretend that we are bumpkins because we have no towns.
“It’s hard if we’re to be mocked by babies,” said Brodd, and knocked Bengt down with his fist. Immediately, Kraki went for his knife. He was Bengt’s second cousin and big enough to tackle Brodd. I jumped between them, swearing at all three with a rougher tongue than I had used before to any man in the crew.
It’s what we’ve just come through, I thought, being shamed and beaten by those Jomsvikings and not a thing we can do about it, and so we turn on each other.
Stig and I held them apart until they cooled off.
“Enough of this wandering then,” grumbled Kraki, “I want to drink.”
So we set about to retrace our steps. After blundering a while down streets too dark and quiet, it was plain that we were lost.
“Let these shrewd town-dwellers find us the way out,” muttered Brodd.
But Bengt and Kraki kept quiet.
As we rounded a corner into still another unfamiliar lane, Stig grimaced and said, “What is that stench?”
From the front of nearly every house, long poles leaned out over the footway, from whose ends hung the rotting carcasses of fowls and cats and other small things—offerings, I guessed, to the city’s gods. In this region of the world, the White Christ still trod lightly.
At the bottom of the lane we chose a branching path, and presently found ourselves in a dark little street that was fenced along one side by a row of palings higher than our heads. Baffled again, we were just turning back when the shouting that Stig had heard before sounded suddenly closer.
Out of the shadows ahead of us, burst a mob of running men, their faces garish in the light of torches. We stood back to let them pass, but before they reached us, a gate in the palisade flew open, and paying us no heed at all, they halted and milled around it, all shoving at once to get through. In the midst of them, a figure thrashed and struggled, letting go a string of curses in a fine, fiery Norse that rose above the foreign babble.
Now, here’s a chance, thought I, to wash away the taste of defeat.
And so I cried, “Boys, does it seem to you too many foreigners for one lone Northman? We must make him share!”
With a whoop, we charged them.
Their rear rank turned in surprise to face us. They were armed mostly with stones and cudgels, though a few brandished swords. Meanwhile the rest, with their prisoner, hurried on through the narrow gate, banging it shut and bolting it behind them.
We made short work of the defenders and five blows of Glum’s axe brought down the gate. We stumbled through it just in time to see the mob disappearing inside a steeply-roofed building that stood some hundred paces back from the fence. On either side of the doorway, poles, like those that lined the streets outside, receded into the shadows. A breeze carried the smell of decay to our nostrils. All this I took in in less time than it takes to tell it.
Glum was first to the door and held it open for us with his shoulder. With swords drawn, we burst inside—and stopped short. The narrow chamber was packed with men and women: short, broad-headed, mostly fair; the men’s heads, which were shaved back to the ears, presented a great surface of scalp to reflect the glow
of the torches that lined the walls. The look on those faces was murderous. But that wasn’t what stopped us.
Against the farther wall, there squatted, huge and heavy, on feet crusted with blood, a god, whose oaken body was cracked and black with the smoke of centuries. It stared out of white saucer eyes set in four misshapen heads. I hadn’t the squeamish nature of a Christman, but this was not an easy god to look at all the same.
And stretched on the ground with his head between two of the god’s black feet, was their prisoner, writhing under the weight of three or four of his captors, one of whom held a wicked-looking short sword to his throat.
“Wendfolk business. Go away, you!”
A thick-set man glowered at us from under bushy eyebrows. Behind him, his people raised their clubs and stones menacingly. I guessed there were upwards of fifty of them to our five.
But Glum replied with a terrific howl that made them all gasp and shrink back though there was little room in the packed chamber for them to move. All, that is, but the bushy-browed man, who bravely stood his ground.
Seizing the moment, I cried in a ringing voice, “That man’s our friend, let him go!”
Bushy-brows scowled and gave me back just as loud, “That one steal. You look—”
Turning, he pushed his way to the side wall of the temple, bent over a low stand, and came up with a great wooden bowl cradled in his bulging arms. “You look!” he commanded again.
I looked and saw enough copper and silver there to have paid for my ship twice over.
“Steal,” he repeated.
“Is that what this is about? I shook my head and smiled. “Up to his old tricks again, is he? Well, we are heartily ashamed of him. Look, you tell me what he took and I’ll make it up to you—no, no, I insist.”
The subject of our talk stopped struggling and lay quite still, too startled, no doubt, to move.
“Now, how much did you say?” I asked in my friendliest tone while reaching into my purse and pulling out a handful of coins—the last ones that I possessed in the world.
The Wends began to whisper among themselves. Bushy-brows just stared and looked perplexed. Finally, balancing the heavy bowl in one arm, he held up a square hand with three blunt fingers showing. “This many ounce.”
“Only that?” I smiled.
Before he could think again, I handed my sword to Bengt who was beside me, and stepped forward with my palm out-stretched.
Cautiously, bushy-brows moved the bowl towards me—the whole room leaned forward—and with a kick I sent it flying into the air.
Pandemonium. I flung myself on the man with the short sword, the lads leapt in around me, slashing right and left, Glum howled and the Wends fell over each other, scrambling for their treasure and bolting for the door.
“Man, get me on my feet and be quick!” snarled the figure on the floor.
Not long on gratitude, I thought, and started to say, “Find your own feet,” when I took a closer look at him.
He was nearly as dirty, cracked, and seamed as the wooden idol that crouched over him. But while that god was oversupplied with eyes, hands, and feet, this poor fellow lacked one of each.
“Odd, half the damn town’s out there!” called Stig from the doorway.
“Right, old fellow, up you get.” I gathered him and slung him onto Glum’s shoulders piggyback. “Form a wedge, boys,” I ordered.
But the boys, aside from Glum and Stig, were on their hands and knees, scrabbling in the dark for the coins and stuffing them down their shirts and in their shoes and caps as fast as they could scoop them up.
“Brodd, damn you! Kraki, Bengt!”
They pretended not to hear me.
A spear thudded against the doorpost, making Stig jump back for cover. Beyond the open door stretched a fiery sea of torches. If they light the roof—!
“As you hope to live,” I shouted, “stand to!” And finding my sword on the floor, where Bengt had tossed it, I applied the flat of it to their backsides. They looked mutinous, but they got to their feet.
Behind Glum, who cleared the way with more stupendous howls, we charged into the crowd.
“Where away, old man?” I shouted to the bundle on Glum’s back.
“Out the gate and hard to starboard!”
With the mob hot on our heels, we raced through dark streets. About the time I thought I could run no more, our pursuers fell back and let us go. We had reached the waterfront, where the foreigners outnumbered the natives, and they feared to raise a riot here. Gasping and laughing, we staggered about, while from the taverns that lined the street, a crowd poured out to see what all the commotion was, and buzzed with curiosity at the sight of Glum and his passenger.
We chose a place and went in. It was full of the usual waterfront riff-raff, jostling each other on the benches, gambling noisily, and dousing themselves with ale. On closer inspection, a half dozen of the riff-raff turned out to be my men. Starkad caught my eye and waved us over.
“Bit of fun with the locals,” I explained breathlessly.
“Who’s that wreck of a man?”
Out the gate and hard to starboard!
“Can’t say—we’ve just met.”
Glum bent down and the old man slid lightly to the floor, steadying himself with a bony hand on the berserker’s arm. Then, giving himself a shake, he peered narrowly at us and in a rasping voice, announced himself as, “Einar Tree-Foot”—simultaneously thumping the floor with his peg leg by way of explanation of the name—“who would stand you to a round of drink, for he knows how to behave politely, but that he hasn’t got the silver for it. Lacking that, he’ll say good night to you.”
He let go of Glum, but immediately stumbled against the table, catching himself as best he could with his one hand and his round knob of a wrist. He tried another step, gripping the table’s edge, but keeping his face turned away from us, as though ashamed of his infirmity. I caught him under the arms before he fell again and sat him on the bench next to Otkel. We crowded in beside him.
“Bloody Wend bastards took away my crutch,” he growled.
Starkad, sitting down opposite, pushed a trencher of boiled venison and a pile of flatbread toward him. “Sink your fang in this, old man. Put some flesh on those bones—what ones you have left.”
We laughed, and the old man smiled, saying that he would take just a bite for politeness, since he had dined already that day and wasn’t very hungry. But from the way he fell on the meat, giving it light treatment with his few stumps of teeth and swallowing as fast as he could put it in his mouth, I guessed that he had not eaten in days.
While we watched him, I told the others what little I knew, and when at last he pushed the trencher away and belched contentedly, I asked him to tell us his story.
He was a while making up his mind to speak, tugging on his beard, which resembled a Billy goat’s, and frowning to himself. Then he said abruptly, “You’ve stood me to a supper, and so I will sing for it. Einar Tree-Foot knows what’s fair. I live as I must, being too old to fight and too young to beg.”
As to his age, he must have been seventy or more. He was leather-skinned and lean as a bone. His shirt hung from his pointed shoulders like the faded sail from a yardarm on a windless day. Of his eyes, the left was a socket, barely hidden behind a bit of filthy rag, but the right one was needle-sharp, black and quick, like the eye of a bird.
“Come every new moon night, these Wends like to throw a coin in four-headed Svantevit’s bowl—him being the chief bogey hereabouts—and I do likewise, except that I have a trick, don’t you see, of taking out more ’n what I put in—with these.”
He held up his left hand, flexing the skinny fingers and running a supple thumb over the tips of them. Stig, who claimed to be a thief of some pretensions, looked on with interest.
“The blind old hag that guards the place never caught me at it once in all these many years. Only tonight they had a different old woman mounting guard, and doesn’t she let out a yowl when she sees me
pop a coin into my mouth—that’s where I hide ’em. Well, I lay her out with my crutch and make off hot-foot with the lot of ’em at my heels. Was a time, when I was a younger man, that I could run faster on one pin than any of you on two, but this time they overtook me, and the rest you know. I’m obliged to you”—he noticed me with a nod—“you’re a trickster. I like tricksters. And I’ll say ‘Thank you’, which you may know that Einar Tree-Foot doesn’t say to many.”
I thought, here’s a stiff-necked old codger, for a petty thief. But I returned the nod and told him there was no need of thanks, since we were men who craved adventure, as he could see for himself, and who owned a sleek dragon and were bound for the viking life.
“The viking life!” He half rose from his seat and pounded the table with his one good hand—astonished, bowled over, ambushed, and routed by this huge absurdity. “Vikings!” He threw back his head in a cackling laugh that ended in a fit of coughing.
“You’re too late! Go home to your mother, moon-calf. There are no vikings anymore.”
Now I was out of patience. “Tell that to Red Kol,” I shot back. And my men joined in with a chorus of angry grunts.
“Red Kol?” The black needle eye pricked me. “What’ve you got to do with Red Kol?”
“We met him at sea a few days ago,” I answered coolly. “And he looked like a viking to us.”
“Yes, well, there is him”—he screwed up his mouth as though tasting something nasty—“and one or two more like to call themselves vikings and scare folks. But it don’t signify. How’d you get away from him?”
“We didn’t get away from him,” I weighed out my words slowly. I wasn’t going to let this evil old ruffian make light of us. “We took him.”
“Because,” Starkad broke in angrily, “we’ve a captain who knows his business.”
“And because,” I added, with my arm on Glum’s massive shoulder, “we are so lucky as to have in our band a genuine Swedish berserker.”
Odin’s Child Page 28
