Berserker

by William Meikle

  And the wind took us and blew us apart like pebbles in a stream until our people were scattered far from the Father and our souls were filled with fear.

  And still the wind blew and still our people were tossed and turned this way and that, until we came at last to rest in this place.

  For long years the wind blew and the ice grew, and many perished, but there came a time when the wind began to lessen. And in the darkness, as the wind abated, we could hear the cries of our Father, but we could not come to him, for he was locked deep in the ice, in a place we could not reach.

  So we gathered and we made slaves for the digging, strong beasts that would do our bidding in our quest to return the Father’s glory. Deep we delved, and our songs brought warmth to him, there under the icy mountain. But still we could not come to him.

  And in our rush to reach him, we lost sight of ourselves. We made the beasts too well. They grew strong, and moved as fast as the wind itself. And they caught the slowest of us, and took them from the Father so that their songs had gone in the wind forever.

  Slowly we learned how to fight them, and we learned how to kill, but every time we killed, or were killed, our souls became a little more full, and we became a little further from the Father.

  Until there came a day when we could no longer hear the Father, and our warmth no longer reached him. And our people met in the place of the digging, and decided that we would kill no more, but neither would we allow the shadows to take us.

  So we took ourselves out of the sight of the shadows, away from the place of the digging and after a time our songs began to warm the Father once more.

  Since then we have walked with the wind.

  But now the day has come. You have come from the north to lead us back to the place of the digging, where we will once more be one with the Father.

  To prepare for that day we empty our souls, and we keep to the old ways and we sing our songs. We do this in the sure and certain knowledge that our time has come again and soon our Father will have us back there with him, in the place of the digging, in the bosom of the stone.

  The song stopped. The old woman smiled again, and rapped him hard on the forehead with her knuckles.

  You have come from the north to lead us back to the place of the digging, where we will once more be one with the Father.

  Skald woke up, and tears formed in his eyes.

  He was back in the world of pain.

  9

  By the time Tor and Per reached the water’s edge they could barely see five yards ahead of them. The ships were little more than looming shadows in the snow. Tor guessed that night was falling, as the darkness had closed in fast.

  Indeed, even as he thought it, a firebrand was lit in the brow of the nearest ship.

  “Hello on board,” he called as he waded through the freezing water. “Our Captain needs aid.”

  “The Captain? He lives?”

  “Only if you let me out of this fucking water,” Per called, and doubled over, coughing up more blood. Tor bent to help, but Per pushed himself upright.

  “I must make it on my own from here,” he said to Tor. “Give me back the sword. I must stand tall. No weakness can be shown.”

  Tor passed the tall sword back, and Per managed a grim smile as he leaned on it.

  “My thanks lad. And if I falter, it is good to know that such as you has my back.”

  He handed the axe back to Tor.

  “Once aboard, you may have need of this sooner than you think. Kai may have set them against me. If that be the case, then things might not go well for us.”

  Tor hefted the axe.

  “I have faced far worse this day already. I’m your man.”

  Per laughed and clasped Tor on the arm.

  “We have made you Viking already lad. Your father would have been proud.”

  “Father?” Kai said from above them, and, bending over, reached out a hand. “We thought you lost.”

  Per ignored the hand and reached up over the keel. He managed to haul himself on board the Drakenskin but as he looked back at Tor he was grey with pain after the effort. Tor pulled himself aboard beside the Captain, and was just in time to see a smile disappear from Kai’s face.

  “What is wrong,” Per said. “Did you hope I was dead? Or did you really run off to get more men? If so, you are a mite tardy.”

  “Father, I…”

  “Do not speak to me,” Per said. “Get to work. We need to make shelter, for this storm is about to get worse.”

  “I have given orders to make sail,” Kai said.

  Per laughed.

  “In this? You really are as stupid as you look. Cover the decks and make ready for wind. It is going to be a long hard night.”

  Kai stepped forward, hand on sword. Tor moved to Per’s shoulder. Kai looked him up and down.

  “I see your pet survived,” Kai said.

  Per spat a wad of blood at Kai’s feet.

  “This man fought off yon beast and saved your Captain’s life,” Per said. “What did you do? You poked it with a sharp stick then ran away. Here Tor, take this. You have carried it with honour already. Now it is yours by right.”

  Per handed his sword to Tor. Tor had to put the axe down to take it, but the Captain’s weapon sat in his palm like an old friend’s handshake. He swung it in the air twice, testing its weight, then held it by his side, relaxed, but ready if need be.

  Kai’s eyes grew wide, and anger was close to flaring in him, but he stepped back, holding his tongue. Tor swung the sword again, and smiled.

  An older Viking stepped forward.

  “Captain? It is good to see you still with us. Kai had you slaughtered and disembowelled by a troll.”

  “Kai has brains and courage in equal measure,” Per said, and hawked up more bloody sputum.

  Kai spun on his heels and left them.

  “He has you making sail?” Per asked the older Viking.

  “That was the order,” the sail-master said. “But I have held off, in hope of your return. Shall we pull up on the shore?”

  Per checked the wind.

  “No time master Bjorn. Lash the boats together at anchor, get the sails down and over the decks, and pray that Thor’s anger will pass us by. It is going to be a long night.”

  The sail-master left them, barking orders at Viking along the length of the longboat, and Per once more leaned on Tor’s shoulder.

  “Come lad,” he said. “I’ll need some help getting this helm off. I almost fear to move it lest it is the only thing keeping my brains in my head.”

  Per was right about the weather. The Viking on all three ships had to fight the wind and snow to make their sails into rough tents over their keels. By the time they hunkered down under the makeshift shelters the gale was blowing the snow horizontally across their bows, shrieking like a tortured cat as it did so. The tarpaulins flapped and strained at the ropes, but they were holding, for now.

  Tor sat at the stern in the small tent covered in furs that served as the Captain’s private bedding area. Per lay on a straw mattress, looking as dead as Skald had on the night of his accident. Tor held the man’s hand. The Captain was alternating between bouts of fevered sleep and moments of wakening. Tor leaned forward as his eyes fluttered.

  “Are we protected?” Per asked.

  Bubbles of blood burst on his lips as Tor nodded.

  “The boats are lashed together, the anchors are loose enough that we will not batter each other to kindling, and the sails are slung. We are as safe as we can be, for a while. But Kai is not happy.”

  Per tried to laugh, but it was too much effort, and more blood came, at lips and nose. Tor wiped it away with a wet cloth as Per struggled to speak.

  “Kai hasn’t been happy since I skelped his arse to ensure his first breath.”

  He grasped Tor’s hand tight.

  “Be careful with him lad. When I’m gone, he must be Captain -- that is our way. But the sword is yours. You earned it today. Do not let him ta
ke it from you.”

  Per sat partially upright.

  “You must not strain yourself,” Tor said, pushing against the Captain’s chest to try to get him to lie down. Per pushed him away roughly.

  “I am not going anywhere... even if I should want to. I just want to give you this.”

  He unbuckled his thick leather scabbard. It was intricately worked with knot-work and beading showing a sea-wyrm being netted from a longboat. It had been at the man’s waist for as long as Tor could remember.

  “Wear this. My Elfrida made it for me many summers ago, and it would gladden my heart to see it pass to a warrior before I go.”

  “Hush,” Tor said, taking the scabbard and pushing the man back down on the mattress. “You said it yourself. You are not going anywhere.”

  Per smiled.

  “This will be my last Viking lad. The halls of Asgard await my coming. I can already hear the drinking songs of Valhalla,” he said. “And I shall be there by morning. I will tell your father that he sired a fine man, and my old friend and I will share much mead, and many women.”

  Tor looked at the scabbard in his hand.

  “This too should go to Kai,” he said.

  “No,” Per said, almost a whisper. “It goes to a man worthy of carrying it. The son I should have had.”

  He gripped tight at Tor’s forearm, then released the pressure. When Tor looked down, Per had fallen into sleep, a smile on his face even despite the blood that oozed around his lips with every breath.

  Tor buckled on the scabbard and sheathed the sword. The weight of it swinging at his waist felt natural as he pulled back the flap of cloth and stepped out to the deck. He had to stoop, so he almost didn’t notice that someone was huddled there in front of him.

  “You are carrying my sword,” Kai said, having to shout to be heard above the wind.

  “No,” Tor replied. “I am carrying your father’s sword. You have your own on your hip.”

  Kai stepped in front of him.

  “You will give it to me now,”

  Tor stared back. He realised that he looked eye to eye with the other man, for the first time in their lives. Kai was elder, by near a year, and had made Tor’s younger life a misery.

  But no more.

  Tor stood silent. Kai put his hand on the hilt of his sword and still Tor didn’t move.

  “It is mine by right,” Kai said.

  Tor knew then that he had him. Kai had allowed a whining query to creep into his voice, and looked away as Tor took a step forward.

  “Your father is sleeping,” Tor said and pushed his way past the man. “I would not wake him unduly… he has my axe by his side, and in his fever might mistake you for someone else.

  Someone a bit more Viking.

  Tor left him there and went in search of food. Wind and snow beat against the makeshift tent in irregular drumbeats and crept under the ropes to chill all exposed flesh to the bone. Most of the crew sat huddled around a small brazier, drinking a hot brew of hazel tea and mead.

  “Sit lad,” the sail-master said. “And have some of this. It will not keep the cold at bay, but it will make you feel a lot better about it.”

  Several of the crew watched Tor as he poured himself a beaker, but no one spoke as he sat beside them. He drank in silence, listening to the wind howl. Now that he had stopped tending to the Captain, he had time to worry about other matters.

  He still had the smell of the beast on him.

  The stench of it might never leave me.

  It had been wounded, and was now out there, somewhere in the snow beyond the village. Tor had enough experience of wolf and bear to know that a wounded beast could prove a lot more trouble than a healthy one. And Skald was also somewhere out there, with no fellow Viking to stand by his side should the beast come upon him in the storm.

  Skald. Where are you?

  Tor had considered heading ashore to search for Skald, but when he’d raised his head above the prow the wind almost knocked him backwards and the snow blinded him within seconds. When he got back to the brazier it was to find ice melting from his helm.

  “Stay close lad,” Bjorn said. “It is on such nights that the wild hunt goes by, and that’s a sight you do not want to see.”

  Tor sat, and drank more of the mead than was good for him; thankful for the heat it spread in his stomach.

  Bjorn the sail-master was first to voice what many of them were thinking.

  “What was that thing? I have seen much, and travelled far, but that was something I have never even heard of.”

  The older Viking around the brazier nodded in agreement.

  “It is something from the old days,” one said. “A bastard child of Loki?”

  “They are certainly ugly enough. I will ne’er forget the way they just tore those men apart, like they were no more than corn dolls.”

  They all fell silent again, staring into the brazier, remembering.

  “Kai said they were trolls,” Tor said.

  “Kai says a lot of things,” one of them replied softly. “Nary a one of them worth listening to.”

  There were some nods of agreement round the brazier, but none spoke too loudly. For the first time, Tor realised that Kai was not well liked.

  They fell quiet again, and more mead was drunk, so much so that Tor started to feel light in the head. He put the beaker down.

  “It was no kind of troll I have ever heard tell of,” Bjorn said after a time. “I heard tell that trolls are bald, with skin like grey stone. Not white as death and as hairy as Ragnar’s breeks.”

  “We killed a troll in Orkney three summers ago,” another said. “It looked nothing like that.”

  “That is because what you killed was a fat, drunk Scotsman,” Bjorn said, and the men laughed, but only for a second. The wind quickly took their humour away.

  “There was a tale I once heard, from a Captain who went further south than any Viking afore him,” Bjorn said. “I heard it from his son’s son. Nobody believed him, but he told of a high rocky island in a narrow inlet to the great sea that leads to Rome and Greece. And on that island, small hairy men frolicked and played. ‘Tis said they were vicious when roused. Mayhap what Tor and the Captain fought today was like them?”

  “It was vicious enough, that’s for certain” Tor said. “But it was far from small.”

  He missed Bjorn’s reply. He was thinking of something else, of the tenderness the beast had shown for the dead female.

  That was not the action of a wild animal. It may be much more like us than we yet know.

  He kept that thought to himself. It was not something the others needed to hear

  “Tell me, what happened with the Captain?” Bjorn said, leaning in to speak in Tor’s ear. “Did he kill the male?”

  Tor looked up the boat before answering. Kai and his men hung around the Captain’s area, but Tor noted with a grim smile that they seemed afraid to venture inside.

  Tor told his tale to Bjorn, and the older man nodded and clapped Tor on the back.

  “You have made some enemies this day,” the sail-master said. “But also many friends. Remember that… when the time comes.”

  10

  Skald opened his eyes and looked up into the smiling round face of the old woman.

  At first he thought he might still be in the wyrd, but as his eyes came into focus he saw the stone roof of a cave overhead. Wind whistled around them, but he found that he was quite warm. He tried to sit up, and had to struggle through several layers of thick clothing. He had been swaddled in heavy furs. They smelled as if they’d been rolled in damp shit then pissed on, and even breathing through his mouth didn’t help much, but when he took a layer off his shoulders he immediately felt the cold bite, and quickly covered himself up.

  The rock overhead glistened damply, and red shadows cast sharply against the walls from burning firebrands that added a thick black smoke to the already cloying intensity of the smells.

  I will never complain about the smell
of Per’s farts again.

  There was a muted murmur of talk in the room, in a guttural language he felt he could almost understand. Just by looking in his immediate vicinity, he saw there were more than thirty of the small people huddled together, adults and children, all staring at him, unblinking.

  I’m an enigma to them. Like the troll was to us, so we are to these.

  The old woman smiled again, and rapped him on the forehead. His head rang in pain. Feeling the back of his skull he found a tender lump the size of a hen’s egg.

  “Who hit me?” he said.

  She covered her ears with her hands, then covered her mouth.

  She cannot understand me. Not outside the wyrd.

  “Back to the mummery then,” he said to himself.

  It was much simpler than earlier. The old woman, who Skald soon learned was called Baren, was adept at picking up small nuances, and Skald suspected the wyrd was helping matters more than a little.

  Once more Skald tried to tell of the Viking, and their coming in the longboats, and this time Baren understood. But still she insisted that it had been foretold. The old woman rapped him hard on the forehead with her knuckles again, and he heard the voice from the earlier wyrding.

  You have come from the north to lead us back to the place of the digging, where we will once more be one with the father.

  She handed him a small amulet on a leather thong. It was a piece of intricate knot-work, done in solid silver, and Skald knew immediately that the metal was a by-product of their digging long ago in their history. It was not the main reason they dug, for that was to try to reach their Father. But the silver reminded them that the Father was there, waiting for them.

  It is a symbol of hope.

  Skald handed it back, but she refused to take it, indicating that it was a gift, for him.

  He thanked her with a kiss on her cheek that made her blush like a girl. He put the amulet over his head and hid it away under the folds of fur.