Berserker

by William Meikle

  Berserker

  By William Meikle

  Berserker

  Copyright 2016 by William Meikle

  All Rights Reserved

  Published by Gryphonwood Press

  www.gryphonwoodpress.com

  This book is a work of fiction. All characters and situations are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons and events is entirely coincidental.

  1

  Tor Tyrsson peered against sleet that lashed like a whip against his face, trying to will land into sight. But yet again, for the thirtieth day in succession, all that could be seen was icy water and thick slush. Sailing the Drakenskin through it was like trying to make headway through a bath of milk and oatmeal, but going back would mean only more of the same. And going back was not an option. They had only caught one small whale to show for the whole trip so far -- eight barrels of oil from sixty days of Viking. They would be laughed out of Ormsdale if they returned now.

  He could only just make out the dim outlines of the other two boats, the Windmaister and the Firewyrm, slightly behind and to his right. It helped knowing they were there, that somewhere nearby there were two other Viking on watch and currently as miserable as he was.

  He pulled his cloak around him and turned his back to the wind. His hands, even inside the deerskin mittens, felt like the ice had already eaten them. His cloak was drenched through from the hood to the bottom that hung, sodden on the wet deck.

  And it was some way yet until he’d be relieved.

  It is my own fault. I wanted this.

  He smiled ruefully to himself, remembering all the nights spent dreaming of Viking, all the times he had pestered his mother for stories about father’s travels. If she’d told him the truth of the matter, that it was many days, all the same, of foul weather and wet clothes, he might have stayed in the relative warmth of the halls of Ormsdale.

  But this summer past his shoulders had got wide enough that they stopped his passage through the Riven Rock on the Eastern Shore, and the Thane announced in the Great Hall that Tor was to go on his first Viking. He’d waited two years for this chance. It would be churlish now to wish it away because of a bout of bad weather.

  He looked along the length of the boat. Only the Captain moved back there, checking the ropes and the sail. Most of the crew sat huddled along the deck, trying to find warmth in beakers of mutton stew -- all except Tor who kept watch, and one other, who was not welcome among the men.

  “Doom,” a voice said from the deck below him. “Doom awaits us all.”

  Tor knew what was coming next.

  There was a clatter, bone against bone. He did not have to look down to know that Skald had cast the runes. That too had been a constant for the last thirty days.

  “Doom,” Skald said.

  “Be quiet Skald,” Tor said. “Please. No more.”

  But Orjan Skald was lost in the wyrd with the Norn. There would be no stopping him, not till the wyrd had run its course and he could give the telling.

  Not that we have to wait. It will be the same telling as has been told these past thirty days.

  “Doom,” Skald said again.

  “If you say that just one more time,” Tor said. “I swear I will give you such a skelp that your head will ring for days to come.”

  There was a laugh behind him.

  “Ignore him boy, Skalds are all the same. Doom, destruction and more doom. That is what they deal in. Better to trust in your axe and your brother Viking.”

  Tor turned to face the speaker. His Captain, Per Johansson, loomed over Skald. His wolf cloak and fur hood made him look like a great bear ready to attack, and suddenly Tor himself felt the cold chill of the Norn’s touch.

  The Doom is coming. I too can feel it.

  Per laughed again, and shining fragments of ice tinkled in his long beard.

  “We all feel a touch of it lad,” he said. “It is what comes of being on a boat for so long without women and with no one to fight but ourselves. This is your first voyage. Best get used to it, for there are likely to be many more days like these ahead of you.”

  “I just wish we could find some land. I need solid ground beneath my feet.”

  “Ground? What kind of Viking are you?” Per said. His voice, like his laugh, was loud and booming. “Only woman and old men pine for land.”

  “Land,” Skald said at Per’s feet.

  “Be quiet Skald,” Tor said softly, but when he looked down he saw that the wyrd had gone. Orjan Skald’s eyes were clear, and he was looking out towards the horizon.

  “No,” Skald said. “Land. Look.”

  Just visible through the sleet, a darker shadow in the gloom, high cliffs loomed. Per clapped Skald on the shoulder.

  “You promise us doom and give us land,” he said. “Mayhap I was right to bring you after all.”

  The Captain left the two youths in the bow and went to rouse the crew.

  Tor punched Skald on the shoulder, and Skald smiled ruefully.

  “Did I speak of doom again?” Skald asked.

  Tor nodded.

  “Doom yesterday, doom today, most probably doom tomorrow. That is all the wyrd sends you?”

  Skald didn’t reply.

  Tor thought that Skald looked even paler than usual, but kept quiet. A Skald’s life is not an easy one, and Orjan hadn’t asked for it. Only three years ago they had both been no more than boys getting underfoot in the Great Hall in Ormsdale, watching Per and his men wenching and drinking and wondering what both would be like. Tor had since found out, but the incident that made Orjan into the Skald meant that they would never share those pleasures together.

  Tor remembered the day well, and dreamed about it often.

  Tor’s mother threw them from the house that autumn morning and told them to fetch some firewood. It was a request she’d made many times of the boys, and one they always heeded, for it meant they could explore the slopes above Ormsdale without fear of reproach. And they got to take the hand-axe with them.

  Tor carried it. He always did, by virtue of being bigger, stronger, and a full week older than his friend. But Orjan was the faster, both in wits and in fleet of foot, and was usually halfway up the scree slope to the tree line while Tor struggled in the lower reaches. Tor often found Orjan watching him from atop a large rock that perched at the top of the hill, resting while Tor struggled upwards getting hotter and more irritated.

  The boys had been warned frequently that the slope was unstable, but they were boys and warnings like that matter little when you are young and have many years ahead of you.

  That morning the first indication Tor had of a problem was when a small avalanche of gravel and rock ran around his feet. The large rock had toppled off its precarious perch and now bounced down the hill towards him. Tor only just got out of its way in time. It hit an outcrop just beneath him, and shattered into fragments.

  “That was lucky,” he called out, but got no response. He looked up the hill, only to see Orjan tumbling in a river of stones towards him, head over heels and limp as a dead fish. His friend landed, half buried in scree and gravel at the foot of the hill. Grey stone was splattered with blood.

  When Tor reached Orjan he feared the worst. One leg was bent and broken such that bone showed through in his thigh, and his head was crushed on the left side. Tor felt fragments of skull, scalp and blood shift beneath his fingers when he bent to check. He had to bend further to find out whether the boy was still breathing. There was a moment of blind panic when he could find no sign of life, but when he put a hand on Orjan’s chest he felt the boy’s heart shudder and thump, like a berserker drumming before battle. He stood to run for help, but the people from the edge of town were already running towards them, his mother, face white with shock,
in the lead.

  That night was the longest of Tor’s young life. Gefjun Fjölkunnga, the healer, was sent for, and she spent two long hours tending to Orjan. When she was done, she looked almost as pale as the boy, and declared that the matter now lay with the Nord. She made a brew of hvönn and told them to feed it to him every hour, whether he desired it or not.

  Debate raged in the Great Hall whether to send the boy to the Gods early, or let them have him in the morning anyway. There seemed to be little other choice. A fever already burned in Orjan. Gefjun had set his leg, but all that saw him knew that the boy would never run again, and might not even walk. That was a small matter though, for it seemed almost sure that his mind was gone, to wander dark places before his body could catch up. Three women took turns all that night tending him. Tor slept at the foot of the bed and would not be moved, even under threat of a whipping.

  The Gods were kind. They sent Orjan back; bent and broken, and no longer just Orjan, but they sent him back.

  His healing was long and hard, but Tor saw to it that the other youths could not torture this weakness in their midst. Orjan Skald stuck to Tor’s side wherever he went. And if he knew that he was spoken of throughout Ormsdale as Tor’s pet, he never mentioned it.

  When Per Johansson called for Viking to go east, Tor was among the first to volunteer, and there was never any doubt that the Skald would go as well. And if some of the crew were not in favour, Per himself took the youth under his personal protection, and Per’s right hand was strong enough to keep the peace. For a while at least.

  If only he would stop pronouncing doom at every turn.

  Skald struggled to his feet. Tor put out a hand, offering help but Skald knocked it away and used his staff to clamber upright. Tor saw how much pain just that act had cost, but said nothing.

  They stood there, side by side, and watched the land grow closer.

  “Land at last,” Tor said. “I wonder what waits us there?”

  “I’m not sure I want to know,” Skald said softly.

  They sailed alongside a high cliff for several hours, a wall of grey stone with no vegetation, no gulls. Waves hit the walls and boomed, like distant thunder, throwing spray in the wind that lashed into their faces alongside the sleet. The boat yawed and pitched as the waves rebounded off the cliffs and threw the water into high hills and deep valleys. The tops of the cliffs were lost from sight under low cloud, and everything looked a flat dead grey.

  “Not much to trade with here, eh lad?” Per said at Tor’s shoulder.

  He had the dogs with him. Two tall rangy wolfhounds, Huginn and Muninn, excited to have been let out of the hold, got up on their rear legs to look over the bow, their tails wagging excitedly.

  “They can smell the land,” Per said as the dogs howled in unison. “And like yourself, are eager to feel ground under their feet.”

  “And a tree to pish on?”

  Per laughed.

  “Aye. That too,” the big man said, and clapped Tor on the shoulder again. “When we reach a spot to land, you shall be first ashore. It is your right, on your first Viking.”

  “No, he will not. I will not allow it”

  Tor recognised the voice before he turned towards it. Kai Persson stood there with three others. Tor barely knew their names. The fact that they followed Kai as closely as the wolfhounds followed Per told him all he needed to know about them.

  Lapdogs hoping to pick up scraps from their master.

  Kai carefully brushed his plaited hair away from his face. Despite the driving sleet he did not wear a cloak.

  Of course not. It would obscure that shiny new breastplate he is so proud of.

  “It is my right to be first ashore Father,” Kai said. “You will not deny me it.”

  Per didn’t even look round. He threw out his right hand and smacked Kai in the mouth. The heavy leather glove split his top lip. It burst like a too-soft fruit and blood flew in the sleet. One of the three lapdogs reached for a sword, but when Per turned the look on his face was enough to quieten them.

  “Your right?” he said, shouting in Kai’s face. “You had the right last year. And what did you do with it? You fell on your hind-end in the surf.”

  Kai looked like he might speak again, but Per raised his hand, and once more there was quiet.

  Skald laughed.

  “Down boy,” he said.

  Kai stepped forward and aimed a kick at Skald, but it didn’t connect, for before it landed both wolfhounds had leaped forward and clamped their teeth on the Viking’s ankle. Per let them chew for a second before ordering them off.

  “Huginn, Muninn. Heel.”

  “Aye,” Skald said, laughing again. “Put him down. You do not know where he has been.”

  Tor put a hand on Skald’s shoulder to quieten him.

  “Excuse him,” Tor said to Kai. “His mouth moves faster than the wind, and with as little thought to consequence.”

  Kai spat a glob of blood at Skald’s feet.

  “There are far too many of your pets on board this boat,” he said to Per. “It would be best to take good care of them. You would not want one to go missing in the night.”

  He limped off, his three henchmen keeping close order behind him.

  “Kai is correct,” Tor said. “He is your son. It is his right to be first ashore.”

  Per watched the four Viking huddle in conversation under the sail.

  “Kai cannot find his arse when he needs a shite,” he said. “The honour will be yours. I will hear no more on it.”

  Per strode off. The dogs barked once, as if saying goodbye to the land, and as ever left to follow at their master’s heels. Once Per passed the four others under the sail, Kai turned to Tor, and made a motion of moving a knife across his throat.

  Skald laughed again.

  “Same old Kai. Still hungry for attention. Still stupid.”

  Tor shook his head.

  “Stupid he may be. But he is Per’s son. One day he will be Captain. It will be best to be on good terms with him.”

  “He has no time for your good terms. He never has. You know that.”

  Yes. I know that. From long and painful experience.

  Two hours sailing later they came to the mouth of a high wide fjord.

  “Well Tor,” Per said, coming once more to join him at the prow. “What do you think? Are there rich pickings to be had? Or is calmer water a good enough reason to sail awhile between these hills?”

  “It would be good to get out of this sleet?” Tor said hopefully, bringing a laugh from the Captain.

  “That it will lad, that it will.”

  Per ordered the boats inside. Here in the lee of the eastern cliff they finally found some shelter from the wind and the sleet, and they were able to make good time. And in the sheltered inlet, they also found forests lining the hillsides.

  “Well, the dogs at least shall be happy with so many trees available,” Per laughed.

  High above a pair of white-tailed eagles soared in a slow dance.

  Per clapped his hands.

  “Where eagles fly, there is always food to be had nearby,” he said. “Fish, fowl and maybe even coney.”

  “Something other than old hard mutton in any case,” Tor muttered.

  The fjord was longer than any Tor had previously encountered, and seemed to stretch for many miles into the far misty distance. But finally, two whole months after they had left Ormsdale, they found signs of people.

  It wasn’t much at first, just some fishing nets strung across inlets on the shore, and a solitary ruined building that looked like it had once stood guard halfway down the fjord.

  “It’s a ruin,” Skald said. “Whoever built it has long gone.”

  Per smiled.

  “It may only be a ruin to you lad, but to me it is an omen. For if they have had to build reinforced dwellings, they must have something to protect,” he said. “Mark my words, there will be a settlement at the end of this fjord. And there we shall see what we shall s
ee."

  Per was proved right twenty minutes later when they passed a jutting headland and had their first clear view down the remaining length of the fjord. Snow covered mountains dominated the far end, a tall range of them heading off into the misty distance. Beneath the nearest peak, almost hidden in shadow, sat a settlement of small roundhouses. Smoke rose from several of the roofs.

  “Make ready,” Per shouted, and the air filled with noise; the din of metal on metal and the clash of spears as the Viking prepared.

  “I thought we were on a trading mission?” Skald said.

  Per laughed.

  “When they see us coming, most assume the worst. Tis best to be ready for a less than warm reception.”

  Skald left for a short time. On his return he brought Tor his tall two-handed battleaxe and his helm. Tor had to brush ice and sleet from his hair to get the helm to fall into place, and the axe handle felt slick and cold in his palm when he removed the mittens.

  “You should have a sword,” Skald said.

  “Only when I earn one,” Tor replied. “And when Odin wills it.”

  He hefted the axe.

  “Besides,” he said. “This was good enough for my father. It will do for me.”

  They came up on the settlement fast. Ahead of them was a small rocky shore with two old fishing boats pulled up above the tide line.

  Tor realised he had started to breathe heavily, and fought to calm himself.

  I have wanted this moment for years. I will not hurry so quickly that I miss the enjoyment of it.

  He looked ahead of the boat, planning the spot where he might best enter the water. As he surveyed the shoreline there was no sign of any people.

  “Where are they?” Skald whispered. “Someone must have seen us.”

  “Maybe they fear us?” Tor said. “Mayhap they are in hiding.”

  “And fear us they should,” Per shouted at his side, unsheathing his long sword.

  He raised it in the air.

  “We are Viking,” he roared.

  “We are Viking,” the crew shouted as one, and Tor leaped over the side into the water.